Deadpool Syndrome
by Ricky Pine
Summary: Peter Parker is the biggest fanboy of The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Gwen Stacy is the girl he loves. Neither one remembers that the events of the movies happened for real...until they meet the agents of SHIELD and Deadpool. (AU crossover with The Amazing Spider-Man, MCU films and TV series, Deadpool, and Big Hero 6. Ships: PeterxGwen, Clintasha.)
1. In The End, Everything Collides

**Extended Summary:**

 _Peter Parker has always loved the Amazing Spider-Man movies. He's always identified a great deal with the web-slinger. But lately, he's had weird dreams in which he himself actually is Spider-Man, and the girl he likes, Gwen Stacy, is the girl he tries and fails to save._

 _And, to make matters even weirder, an accident involving Tony Stark's science fair project leads to Peter displaying an ability he never even knew he had._

 _That's when the agents of SHIELD come in._

 _That's when everything changes._

 _(This is an alternate universe fic, so extreme liberties have been taken with the source material. Any and all OC's are owned by me. The Avengers and all other MCU films are owned by Marvel. Agents of SHIELD is owned by ABC and Mutant Enemy. The Amazing Spider-Man is owned by Sony. Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney. Deadpool is owned by Fox. Agent Carter is owned by ABC and Fazekas & Butters.)_

 ** _CHAPTER 1: IN THE END, EVERYTHING COLLIDES_**

 *****PETER*****

Mr. Jameson might actually have a good reason to constantly gripe about my journalistic skills, or lack thereof in his eyes. It could be the reason why I'm only the photographer for the school paper, and why I don't get to write any articles. The last time I tried to write one was my movie review for _The Amazing Spider-Man 2._ I mean, I'm a lifelong fan of ol' Webhead, so I'd like to think I know his cinematic exploits back to front.

Usually, Jameson doesn't watch movies. He's too high-strung to sit and relax for any length of time, which explains why he's never around for first-period journalism class. He just doesn't have it in him to sit and preside over a classroom for an hour every morning.

I guess he saw this one, though. Because in a perfect echo of Cade Clarke's assbutt boss, he replied to the e-mail in which I'd sent my glowing movie review with a simple, bold statement: "WRONG!"

In a way, though, I was wrong in my review. Public opinion on that movie was nowhere near as positive as my own. Something that, at the time, was news to me.

The good thing was, at least I'd made sure to read no other reviews until after submitting my own, to make sure my review was as unbiased as possible.

The bad thing was, too often, news had dropped into my lap, sometimes with enough force to at least bruise my balls, if not bust them.

That review was just one such example.

Another one happened less than an hour ago, while I and my only regular journalism classmate, Clint Barton, were in class putting together the next issue of the _Augustine Avenger._ We'd been visited by the school's star athlete - well, one of them, anyway. And not lacrosse captain, football captain, all-around Captain Awesome himself (if you'll excuse the _Chuck_ reference), Steve Rogers. No it was the less all-American boy wonder of Augustine High. The ultra-rich, ultra-elite, ultra-blond Brit twit known as Thor Odinsson.

All right, I'm painting Thor in a hella bad light here. To be more fair, he's pretty damn aloof. Guy can barely crack a smile, not even when he's hit his latest game-winning home run. Probably because he knows Steve, who's a few shades more skillful than he, is letting him get the glory. It's only nice, because baseball is the only one of Augustine's HATS trick (Holy American Trifecta of Sports - I can thank the ever-witty Tony Stark for that one) that Thor's even remotely skilled at.

Today, though, Thor wasn't in a sporty mood. He was here for two reasons. One, to drop off his written statement about the upcoming baseball championship match. The second reason was for him to say to Barton, "And just so you know, I won't allow my brother to hurt you again."

"Damn straight," Barton laughed. Then Thor's words really sank in. "Wait, what?"

Thor did a double take, his ponytail swinging wildly. "Erm...you didn't know? Loki's just come back."

I looked at Barton, and we both mouthed the same foul swear word. Neither of us could believe what we'd just heard. After all, Loki Odinsson was every bit as malicious and trickster-y as his Norse-god namesake. What he'd done to Barton last year had been more than enough to prove that - and to land him in a plush "rehab center" for "troubled" rich kids way down near LA somewhere.

"When did this happen?" Barton asked, his eyebrows knitted.

"Yesterday," Thor said. "His year-long stay was up, so, er…" He stood there for another awkward moment - a rarity for him - before turning to leave. "Like I said, though," he added while he was halfway out the door, "I won't let him do anything to you. Or anyone else, for that matter. I know...I know to keep my guard up on him now."

Barton let out a very long, very fake laugh as soon as we were alone again. "Yeah, ain't that somethin', Petey? There we were in the city yesterday, Skye Hamada bein' her flirty self with you again...and there was Loki, comin' back here as if nothing had ever happened."

I could tell Barton was shaken by Thor's revelation, because he was able to mention my sort-of stalker without remarking on how jealous he was of me for catching her fancy. Or how not-her-type I was.

"Sooo…" Barton drawled. "What were you sayin' again before Thunder-Arms interrupted us?"

I spared a moment to laugh at Thor's ridiculous, but surprisingly appropriate, nickname. "I don't even remember," I lied. "Whatever it was, it's probably not important."

"Sure it is," Barton said. "That's about as true as Thunder-Arms bein' seventeen."

I didn't blame Barton for trying to defuse the tension with the weird sense of humor we sort of share. Especially with another popular running joke at Thor's expense. Everyone assumes he's in his mid-twenties at least, like a _21 Jump Street_ cop, or an actor playing a teenager in a movie. Having at least two days' worth of stubble on his face at all times doesn't help.

"Seriously, what was it again?" Barton asked. Guess he's done feeling sassy. "Something about a nightmare?"

I was saved by the bell - literally. "Shit, I gotta go," I said. "I'll keep an eye out for Loki, all right, man?"

"You don't gotta waste your time, Parker," Barton said. "I'll be fine. Okay?"

"Yeah, sure. See ya later."

We headed off at that point for our next classes, going in opposite directions.

I'm now sitting in the back of second-period Calculus, and my mind's been turning over the events of the last ten minutes or so. I look up just as the bell rings again, and as usual, Gwen Stacy catches my eye. She's closing a book and putting it away in her bag. I recognize the cover right away, even at a distance of fifteen feet. I have a copy of my own of that one - _Red Rain_. The author, like me, is a big Spider-Fan. So naturally, he packed it full of Spidey references, and that book instantly shot to the top of my favorite list.

Speaking of Spider-Man, in this moment, I do basically what Cade does when he's looking longingly at Sarah Reagan when they're sitting down for class in the first _Amazing Spider-Man_ movie. My eyes lock with Gwen's, and right away, I lower my head, too nervous to keep looking at her.

I force myself to look up, though. Sure enough, she's still there, smiling at me. She even adds a little wave hello. I smile back - oh God, why did I just do that? Gwen's smile is sweet and endearing, while mine is...neither of those things. There's a reason why I much prefer to be behind the camera, people.

My smile doesn't get Gwen to look away, though. What does do that is a certain late arrival.

"Peter Parker!"

I cringe at the sound of the horrible fake British accent. I mean, I shouldn't judge - I've had Barton fall off chairs many times with my lousy Thor Odinsson impression. But Skye Hamada, when she tries to copy Thor's accent, sounds truly god-awful. Like a drunken Cockney girl, not at all the refined sound everyone hears come out of Thor's mouth.

"Oh, Peter, my darling," Skye coos as she lays a serious power-hug on me. "I haven't seen you since we were at SFMOMA yesterday! How've you been?"

I roll my eyes, making sure she doesn't see me do so. As much as I don't like her, I don't want to seem rude. "Like I left my heart in San Fransokyo," I say. "Now could you get off me, please? I can't see the board."

"You silly boy, you," Skye says, pinching my cheek before moving over to her seat.

Immediately, I bury my flaming red face in my hands. I don't think I'll ever understand why this girl fixates on me, of all people. God knows there's plenty more attractive - and more responsive to her advances - specimens out there.

While the teacher starts talking about our next lesson ("Introduction to Integrals"), I take the occasional note. But most of my attention is focused on Gwen.

Only two movies have ever given me nightmares. One, indirectly. Ever since I first saw _Inception,_ I've always dreamed of places that looked familiar, but weren't, because they were arranged like a maze, or made with impossible geometry. So, about 99% of my dreamscapes, good or bad, look like scenes from that movie.

Among the other one percent was the nightmare I had last night.

In the dream, I was in the middle of _The Amazing Spider-Man 2._ But not in the middle of watching it - I was in the thick of things, seeing things from Spider-Man's point of view. The worst part was the scene my dream was in - the one where Sarah Reagan dies.

Except it wasn't Sarah falling to her death, but a different, prettier blonde girl - Gwen Stacy.

So, as Spider-Man, I did everything exactly as it was done in the movie. But it felt really mechanical, because it was something I'd seen so many times before, and I knew how it would end. I somehow knew that no matter what I did to try and change things - fire off my webline earlier, and manage to catch Gwen/Sarah before she hit the ground, only to snap her neck as a result - the end result was inevitable.

I knew it hadn't actually happened, especially after I woke up. But the dream had been so vivid, and so familiar. Like an actual memory. I'd been dreading coming to second period today, and not just because I knew Skye would be there. Also because if Gwen were to not show up, I wouldn't know what to think.

Probably the first thing I would think, though, is _Why didn't I get to know her sooner?_

I've spent all of this year in the back of Calc with Gwen always in the next row over, two seats ahead. I haven't been performing nearly as well in this class as I would like, because every day, I've seen her sitting there. Studious, attentive...and very beautiful.

And me being my awkward, dorky self, I haven't been able to work up the courage to so much as talk to her.

In the end, I don't really have to, though. Because she's the one who actually comes up to talk to me first - during the break between second and third period. I guess she follows me to my locker, because just a second after I open it and switch out my Calc book for my History and English ones, I hear her call me.

"Hey!"

I look around and see Gwen hanging around behind me. I then look around to see if there's maybe someone else she's saying hey to.

"Yeah, you," she says with a smile. "You're the photographer, right? What's your name?"

I tug at the neck of my shirt. "Um...uh...you don't know my name?"

"Oh, I know your name," Gwen says. "I just wanna know if you do."

I close my locker, laughing nervously. Resisting the urge to ask her if she's seen _The Amazing Spider-Man_ (she has to have seen it, because where else would she have gotten that line from?), I say my name for her. And bonus - I manage to say it without tripping or stuttering. _Mental pat on the back there, Petey,_ I think when Gwen says her name back to me, even though she knows that I know her name just like she knew mine.

"So are you gonna be there for the science fair?" Gwen asks, making a vague gesture in the direction of the gym.

I look over there myself. "Oh...oh yeah. Yeah, I gotta...I gotta take pictures, don't I?"

"Nice," Gwen says. "So...well, I'm here to tell you that I don't care what you take a picture of, as long as you don't capture Tony Stark tryin' to kiss me in front of everyone."

"Again?" I ask, frowning sympathetically. Other than the whole Loki-gate thing, the single most memorable event of last April was Stark's painful attempt to kiss Gwen onstage as she accepted her first-prize award.

"That's why I'm not competing this year," Gwen says. "Well, that and the fact that Tony says he's got something that's really gonna knock everyone's socks off."

"Haha. Not literally, I hope?"

Gwen's smile widens. "Knowing that guy...who the heck knows?"

"I know, right?"

We both laugh a little more, then we start standing there, not saying anything else. I hate to admit it, but I have a bad habit of...well, not really biting my lower lip, but sort of sucking it in at one corner. It's hard to describe, but basically, it happens whenever someone I don't really know all that well tries to talk to me. And, since a lot of people come to me with out-of-the-blue requests for school paper pictures, that happens very often.

"So, uh...are you gonna be there, though?" I ask. "Even...e-even though you're not doin' any projects?"

"Yeah, why not?" Gwen says. "I gotta see what everyone else does. Especially Tony."

I nod. "Uh-huh. Yeah. And I'll be there too. Without any project. Yeah." More lip-sucking from me. God, why don't I just shut up? This is exactly why I don't talk to Gwen - I've always been afraid it's going to end up like this.

The bell rings again. "So, uh, I guess I'll see you there?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. See you there, Peter."

"Ha. Yeah." I start walking backwards slowly, so I can keep my eyes on Gwen for another few seconds at least. We wave to each other, then she turns around and moves on down the hall, back into the science wing. I, meanwhile, head for history, skipping merrily. Again, like Cade Clarke in the first movie. He and I have much in common.

A few hours later, after sixth period, it's time for the science fair. I bring my camera to the gym, where all the displays are already set up, and kids are showing their parents around. It's not just for Augustine students - it's for students of all ages in San Castiel. So there's a lot of grade-schoolers running around. I take pictures of some of the better projects in this section - my favorite is a wind turbine, much like the one made by the little kid in _The Amazing Spider-Man 2._ I'm almost surprised the name of the real kid behind this real project isn't also Eduardo, but instead Jorge.

In the middle-school section, there's nothing to hold my interest.

The high-school section contains only one project - a large inflatable white thing with a weirdly cute face consisting only of a pair of wide, round black eyes. Standing next to it are two Asian guys - one tall and broad-shouldered, the other shorter, skinnier, and younger.

I don't recognize them at first, until Skye Hamada sails up next to them. Then I remember who they are - they're her brothers. Tadashi, a senior; and Hiro, a freshman.

I want to bypass them, but I have to make sure they get their pictures in the paper, especially since they're the only ones I see representing Augustine. So I walk up to them and hold up my camera. Immediately, Skye gushes all over me, but I gently push her away so I can get the brothers in frame with their balloon-man project.

"So who made this one, huh?" I ask after taking the picture.

"He did," Hiro says, pointing to Tadashi at the exact same time his older brother says, "I did."

Tadashi then adds, "You wanna see what he does?"

"Sure."

Tadashi picks up his tablet, swipes the screen, and presses a few buttons. The balloon man then wakes up, its eyes blinking. _"Hello,_ " it says in a high, sort-of male-sounding voice. " _I am Baymax. Tadashi programmed me to heal the sick and injured._ "

"Whoa," I say. I wave to the robot. "Um, hi?"

" _Hello, human_ ," Baymax says.

Tadashi taps his tablet again, and Baymax shuts off. "Aww, really?" I ask. "I was startin' to like this guy."

"His battery doesn't last very long," Hiro says. His voice is unusually deep for a kid his age - it sounds almost like mine. "We've been tryin' to fix it, but so far, we've got nothing."

"Too bad," I say. "Well, I bet you're gonna win, anyway."

Tadashi shakes his head, pointing up to the stage, which has its curtains drawn. "Tell that to Tony Stark," he says. "Nobody knows what he's got this year, but it's so huge it's gotta be up there instead of on the floor."

"Sounds like someone thinks they've got victory in the bag already."

I look up to see Gwen coming our way. "Hey, Gwen," I say. "See anything you like?"

"A few things," Gwen says. "What about this?" She points to Baymax.

Tadashi activates Baymax again, and he runs through the same intro routine he did with me. "We're also workin' to get him to say different things when he's turned on," Hiro explains.

"Work in progress, huh?" I ask.

"You have no idea," Tadashi says. "I actually wanted to put him in the fair last year, but I couldn't get him to do anything at the time."

At this point, the speakers by the stage nearly blow out as they start playing the extremely loud strains of AC/DC. "Shoot To Thrill," if I remember my classic-rock radio correctly. Then the curtains open to show Tony Stark standing next to a table with a Microsoft Surface sitting on top of it.

"Hello, San Castiel!" Stark calls out over the loud music as it finally starts to fade. He starts pacing the stage a bit, like Steve Jobs giving a keynote. (Yeah, I'm aware of the irony there, a Windows user doing a Steve Jobs thing.) Unlike Steve Jobs, though, Stark is very definitely dressed to impress. Black tux, with a red-and-gold-striped tie. Gryffindor colors, I note with appreciation. And SF Dragons colors as well.

"I bet you're all wonderin' why I'm up here today, instead of down there with all of you," Stark says. "Well, it's 'cause I'm above you in so many ways, it's not even funny." He pauses to let a bit of laughter issue from the crowd. "But also because my project is something a little more special. Something I've spent so long working on, I can't even remember a day when it wasn't in my life. Today, I present to you...the world's first-ever artificial intelligence. I call it...Ultron."

He types a few commands into his Surface, then stands back. The screen goes black for a split second, and is accompanied by a loud noise from the speakers. It's like someone took that AC/DC song and sped it up so the whole thing played in only two seconds, then jacked up the volume in the process. It sounds like a demon escaping from hell.

"Not to worry," Stark says, holding up his hands. "That's normal. Ultron's just waking up now, look." He gestures to the screen, showing how it's coming back on, displaying a normal desktop. A window opens up, showing a wavy line running across it like on an oscilloscope.

" _Hello, people of Augustine High,_ " a deep, hypnotic voice says. I can see the wavy line move around as the voice talks. " _I am Ultron._ "

Tadashi snickers to himself. "Hardly original," he whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

"Tell me about it," Hiro whispers back.

"I need a volunteer," Stark says. He scans the audience, seeing a number of raised hands, but ignores them all. "Gwen Stacy, come on up!"

Gwen looks at me and rolls my eyes. I mirror her reaction, then follow her up to the stage.

"And who might you be?" Stark asks me, fixing me with a hawk-eyed stare. I notice that his eyes are brown, just like mine.

"I'm...uh…" I clear my throat. "I'm Gwen's bodyguard."

The crowd laughs out loud at this one - like I said before, Stark's failed kiss is legendary, so everyone knows what I'd be guarding her body against. Even Gwen manages a chuckle, but she quickly stifles it.

"I won't try to make any unwanted advances this time," Stark says. "I assure you, my intentions are strictly honorable. Today, you're here to help Ultron pick out your favorite song."

"Is that all?" Gwen asks with a raised eyebrow.

Stark turns the Surface so Gwen can look directly at the screen. "Say hello to Gwen Stacy, Ultron," he says.

" _Hello, my dear,_ " Ultron says. Another window opens up in the corner of the screen, showing a view of Gwen's face from the Surface's webcam, like in a Skype call. " _You are a most attractive young human._ "

Gwen blushes, and I glare at the machine, as does Stark. "That's not very polite, Ultron," he says sternly. "Let's just get on with the questionnaire, then."

" _Of course, Mr. Stark,_ " Ultron says obediently. " _Now, Miss Stacy...what genre of music do you prefer the most?_ "

"Um…" Gwen taps her fingers against her sides. "I guess modern rock."

" _Interesting,_ " Ultron says. Behind the already-open windows, another one opens to full size, displaying an iTunes-like array of album artwork. " _Now, when you say 'modern rock,' do you mean pop rock or alternative?_ "

Stark curses under his breath. "Almost forgot the camera," he says, fishing a small one out of his jacket pocket. "Gotta make sure the people see what Ultron's doin', am I right?" He hands the camera to Gwen. "Just pin it to your, uh…" He gestures at his chest.

"I got it, thanks." Gwen clips the mini-camera to her lapel and points it at the Surface. Now its display is being shown on a pair of projector screens on either side of the stage, in real time so the audience can see it properly.

" _You didn't answer my question, Miss Stacy,_ " Ultron reminds her.

"What? Oh, sorry. Um, alternative."

" _I like your taste,_ " Ultron says. The wall of album artworks shrinks, now showing only a small handful. I recognize some Coldplay in there, and some Muse, Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons...but not my favorite band, Arcade Fire. _Some super-intelligent computer this is,_ I think. " _Do you prefer softer or harder alternative?_ "

"What the hell, go harder."

" _Better, faster, stronger?_ " Ultron jokes, even throwing in a suspiciously human laugh.

"If you don't know what that means," Stark says, "ask your kids. I promise, it's nothing near as embarrassing and inappropriate as it sounds."

Ultron then narrows the music selection down to Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. " _Before or after 2010?_ "

"After," Gwen says.

" _Heavy or light use of electronic instruments?_ "

"Let's not get heavy. Light."

The Panic! drops off the screen, leaving only Fall Out Boy's _Save Rock and Roll_ album. The graphic of the album's cover opens up, like a book, and the digital pages flip around randomly until it settles on that super-popular favorite - "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark."

"How'd you know?" Gwen asks as the song starts playing, with a little graphic showing up on screen depicting a needle dropping into place on a vinyl record.

" _I had a feeling,_ " Ultron says simply.

I turn to Gwen. "Is that really your favorite?" I ask, smiling hugely.

"Don't act so surprised," Gwen says. "Lots of people love this song. You do too, don't you? Yeah, I can see it on your face."

I hold up my hands. "Guilty as charged."

"Excellent job, Ultron," Stark says. "Now, for the second stage of this demonstration, I'm gonna show you all how amazingly portable Ultron is. He can travel through Wi-Fi and appear on multiple machines at once. Would anyone like to bring up another tablet, or perhaps a smartphone?"

" _Not to worry, Mr. Stark,_ " Ultron says. " _I've got this covered._ "

"Haha...wait, Ultron, what are you doing?" Stark picks up the Surface frantically. He's starting to look a bit freaked.

Across the gym, there's a loud sparking noise as Baymax activates, seemingly all by himself. He blinks, then looks around. " _This is a strange body,_ " he says in Ultron's voice. " _It's large, but very buoyant. How high can it go, I wonder?_ "

Baymax bends his knees, then leaps high into the air, almost reaching the ceiling.

Behind me, I hear Stark yelling at Ultron to deactivate, but it's pretty faint. I can sort of picture where Baymax is about to hit the ground. It's the spot where the Hamada siblings are standing, staring in shock at Tadashi's hijacked creation.

Call it Spidey-sense.

I jump off the stage, somehow managing to stick the landing, then take off running in the direction of the Hamadas. I push them all out of the way, but Hiro lies there, paralyzed with fear as Baymax comes down.

Instinctively, I raise my hands and catch the inflatable robot, rolling him around until I can drop him back on his feet. As soon as that happens, Baymax shakes his head and asks, in his normal voice, "What just happened?"

"I'd kinda like to know that myself," Tadashi whispers, an awestruck look on his face. He leans down to help his brother up. Hiro is panting heavily, his hand on his chest, and it's at least ten seconds before he's able to stand on his own again.

When he does, he breathes, "That's not possible. Nobody can lift Baymax like that. He weighs about three hundred pounds."

Tadashi wraps his arms around Baymax and tries unsuccessfully to lift him. Baymax shakes Tadashi off and looks at me, then at Hiro. "Are any of you hurt?" he asks.

Hiro and I both shake our heads.

"On a scale of one to ten, how much does-" Baymax begins, before Tadashi shuts him down again.

I turn to Skye to see if she's okay. She's definitely fine - she's got her cell phone out and is making a call. "Yeah, Coulson, I think we've found him. I'll bring him to you right away." She hangs up and looks at me. "Peter, I'm gonna need you to come with me."

I'm floored by the fact that she's talking to me in a normal tone of voice - no bad British accent, no sweet-talk, nothing. And by the fact that as of now, I have no idea what's going on.

"Who are you?" I ask Skye.

"I'm with SHIELD," Skye says, flipping a badge on a leather wallet like a TV cop. I don't recognize the logo on the badge - it looks like a stylized eagle in a circle. "Peter, come on. My boss needs to speak with you. You have to understand, it's a matter of life and death."

"What...what the…" I don't even know how to respond to this.

"You need to come with me, too," she says, gesturing to her brothers. "And you," she adds, pointing to Stark.

"Who, me?" Stark says, looking up from his Surface, which is no longer displaying Ultron's voice meter. "Well, anything for the hot girl, I guess. Hey, listen, I'm sorry my project messed with yours. I totally didn't see that coming-"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Skye says, waving her hands dismissively. "If I were you, kid, I'd kiss first prize goodbye."

"Who're you callin' 'kid?'" Stark asks, laughing as he steps up next to Skye. "We're the same age!" His face falls a bit as he realizes what I've already figured out - everything we know about Skye Hamada is a lie. "Aren't we?"

"Not even close," Skye says, leading the way out of the gym. Stark and the two brothers follow her, but I hang back, looking around at everyone. I catch Gwen's eye last, and she mouths, " _What's goin' on?_ "

I shrug. " _You askin' me?_ "

"Peter!" Skye's voice snaps me out of my trance. Unsure of what else to do, I follow her and the others out of the gym, up to a black SUV - Lexus, I think - with tinted windows. On the side is painted a circular insignia with an eagle design - the same one that was on Skye's badge.

"Make yourselves comfortable, boys," she says, opening the door and allowing us all in. Hiro and Tadashi get into the backseat, leaving the middle row open for Stark and me. Swallowing all my natural instincts even as they demand I get as far away from this strange car as possible, I take a seat and belt myself in.

In the front passenger seat, a balding middle-aged man turns around and pulls off a pair of sunglasses. "Hello, young man. Peter Parker, right?"

"Um...yeah." I gulp a few times. "Who are you?"

"Agent Phil Coulson, SHIELD," the man says. "I'm sure you have too many questions to count right now, Peter. And you, Tony." Coulson looks at Stark, whose cool and collected aura falters a bit. "But those will have to wait until we're safe on board the Bus." He turns to Skye as she fires up the ignition. "Ten minutes, right?"

"Hopefully," Skye says. "It all depends on how fast I can get us through airport security."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Stark says. "Did you say 'airport?' Shit, and I don't even have my passport."

"You won't need it," Coulson says. "We're not leaving the country. Just crossing it."

"Where to?" I ask.

"A place you know better than you think, Peter," Coulson says. "The place where you were born."

I snort. "Okay, that's just bullshit. I was born here in San Castiel."

Coulson turns to Skye. "I thought you said he was already starting to remember."

"I don't think he knows what he's remembering," Skye says. "He just thinks it's dreams."

"What's just dreams?" I ask, my voice starting to rise. "And where the hell are we going?"

"New York," Coulson says. "We're takin' you home, Spider-Man."


	2. And Their Words Are Really Clear

_**CHAPTER 2: AND THEIR WORDS ARE REALLY CLEAR**_

 *****PETER*****

Maybe at any other time, I would have loved it if someone mistook me for my favorite superhero. But today, after so much crap has gone on, I feel really unnerved when Coulson calls me Spider-Man.

I'm so lost in my own thoughts and worries that the next thing I know, I'm getting repeatedly poked in the shoulder by Hiro. "Dude, open your door," he says.

"What?" I look around and see that we're stopped at an intersection about half a mile from San Fransokyo International Airport. Because the city itself is all crowded together in a relatively small area, the airport has to be here in San Castiel, about ten miles south.

Meanwhile, there's something repeatedly knocking on my door outside.

"Open the door," Hiro repeats. "We need to get Baymax in before the light changes."

"Wait, what? How can we fit-"

"He's in his box," Tadashi says, "and he's right outside your door, Peter, so grab him."

I look out the window and see a red box sitting on the sidewalk. "That's really him?" I ask. As if in answer, Baymax's arm emerges from the box and he knocks on the door again. "How'd he get here?"

"His box comes with wheels," says Tadashi. "Just grab him. You're probably the only one here who can lift him anyway."

"If you say so," I mutter, quickly opening my door and grabbing the box (Baymax's hand has been retracted). I find it hard to believe that Baymax weighs 300-something pounds - the metal box definitely doesn't feel anywhere near that heavy.

The real challenge, though, is to get the box through the door. It's about two feet wide, and just as tall, so no matter which way I turn it, it does not want to pass through.

"Peter, the light just changed," Skye warns me.

"All right. Everyone, get back." I give a huge tug on the box, and it finally comes in. I then lay it on the seat between me and Stark before pulling my door shut a split second after Skye hits the gas.

The rest of the ride to the airport passes in silence. Skye and Coulson flash their badges at the security checkpoint before we drive through the back entrance. Next stop - a huge black jumbo jet, probably the biggest one I've ever seen. Skye drives the SUV through its open cargo bay door, parking next to a classic red Corvette, of all cars.

As soon as Skye turns the car off, Coulson turns to me and says, "I'll be back soon - just have to fetch something from the lab. You kids can hang around a bit till I get back." He turns to leave, but then stops, turns around, and adds, "Don't touch Lola."

I eyeball him out of the corner of my eye while he disappears through a pair of glass sliding doors. "Who's Lola?" I ask.

Skye slides out of the driver's seat and points to the red Corvette. "She's the reason why Coulson's never gonna get married," she says. "Well, that and the fact that the only woman he ever loved thinks he's dead. But seriously, Coulson's always been married to that car."

"And for good reason, too," Hiro says, climbing out of the backseat while Stark and I leave the second row empty except for Baymax's box. "That car can fly."

Stark whistles under his breath. "Wow. Note to self - make sure to get a ride in the flying Corvette."

I watch as Hiro and Tadashi slide Baymax out of the car. "If he's really that heavy," I ask, "how are you two able to not break a sweat liftin' him together?"

"He's lighter when he's in the box," Tadashi says. "When he's inflated, he weighs a lot more."

" _Inflation is a core aspect of my non-threatening design_ _,_ " Baymax says. He starts popping out of the box, but Tadashi pushes him back in.

"Not now, Baymax," he says. "Let's save it for later."

Tadashi and Hiro drag Baymax over to the corner of the big cargo bay, and then Hiro sits on the box while the rest of us stand around, not looking at each other.

"So…" I ask, finally breaking the silence after a minute or two. "I'm guessin' none of you Hamadas are actual high-school students?"

"I am," Hiro pipes up. "But the other two are a little past high-school age."

"I'm a senior at San Fransokyo Tech," Tadashi says. "And Skye here-"

"-never had any formal schooling," Skye cuts in. "I'm all self-taught. And I kid you not - when SHIELD first found me, I was workin' out of a van."

"Good to know," I mutter. "So, then, what the hell were you doing, goin' to high school? They decided to make you complete your education?"

"Hah. No." Skye blows a loose strand of hair out of her face. "It was just my mission. Well, _our_ mission," she adds, gesturing to her brothers. "But mostly mine."

"And your mission was to creep me out by huggin' me a hundred times a day?"

Skye sighs through her nose. "I hate to admit it, but I did have an ulterior motive in there." She sticks her hand in her pocket, then pulls it out again. There seems to be nothing in her hand, but she's rubbing her index finger and thumb together, world's-smallest-violin style. Finally, she walks up to me and holds out her hand, showing me what she's got between her fingers.

"Micro-tracker," she says, rolling the tiny piece of plastic over so I can see the sharpened end. "Every time I'd hug you, I'd stick one of these into you."

I make a weird choking noise. "Trackers? You mean…" I suddenly realize that this might explain the weird markings I've been seeing on my hands lately. Mostly in the same spot, like tiny vaccination scars. I've always had a little red mark there on my right hand, between the knuckles on my middle and ring fingers. I've been told that it was caused by a bee sting when I was a baby (incidentally, that little incident might have contributed to my lifelong fear of bees, but let's not go there.)

That mark had faded away with time, but recently it had been coming back, a little more red and noticeable each day. Now I know why, and I also know I was better off not knowing.

"What exactly have you been tracking?" I ask, more out of creeped-out curiosity than anything else.

"Not your exact GPS geo-tagged location, if that's what you mean," Skye says.

I wipe imaginary sweat off my forehead. "Whew. And here I thought my privacy was really bein' invaded."

Hiro takes the tracker from Skye and sticks it in his own hand, the needle disappearing under his skin. I have to really lean in to see it, but when I do, I regret it. He then tosses the rest of the device aside and takes Tadashi's tablet, showing me the display after a few seconds of searching for whatever it is he's looking for.

"The tracker basically monitors all bio-functions," Hiro says, switching between two different screens with two different people's readouts being displayed. One has Hiro's name on it, and the other has mine. "Neural activity, so we know if you're in pain or not. Blood pressure monitor, to make sure it doesn't change."

"And if it ever did change," Skye chuckles, "then we assumed it was just you jerkin' off." I stare at her, mortified. "Oh my God," she laughs. "I was just...I swear to God, I was just kidding! I didn't mean…"

Stark cracks a brief grin. "Girl, you live with two young guys. You oughta know that if there's nothing else to do, a teenage boy _will_ find a way to make himself happy."

I shake my head, my face on fire. "Disgusting."

"Yeah, now I feel really dirty about all this," Tadashi gripes. "Thanks a lot, Skye. That's _way_ too much TMI."

"I'm...I'm sorry!" Skye says in between brief fits of laughter. "I seriously didn't know!"

I clasp my hands in front of my face. " _Change. The damn. Subject._ "

" _The software for the bio-trackers is loosely based on my own sensors for humans in distress,_ " Baymax says. He starts inflating out of his box again, carrying another tablet in his hand. No, not a tablet. Stark's Surface.

"Hey, I was wonderin' where that went," Stark says, taking his Surface back.

"Dammit, Baymax," Tadashi groans, taking the tablet from Hiro and furiously trying to get back to Baymax's controls. "Shut...down...now!" Baymax deflates, and Tadashi locks the box up tightly.

"I don't get it," Hiro says, sitting on Baymax's box again. "He's never been able to do that before. Unless…?"

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Tadashi asks.

He and Hiro both swivel their heads and look at Stark. Or, more accurately, at the Surface Stark's still clutching to his chest.

"What?" Stark asks defensively.

"Your AI thing," Skye says. "After it got into Baymax, he started actin' haywire like this."

Stark scoffs, gesturing wildly at Baymax's box. "If that's your definition of 'haywire...'"

"What I mean," Skye hastily amends, "is that your program infected Baymax. And you might have cut it off and rescued him, but there's still some residual effects."

" _You mean like my newly-acquired ability to self-activate at will?_ " Baymax asks. Hiro is pushed off the box as Baymax emerges once again, despite the locks having been engaged.

Tadashi curses again, while Hiro fetches a soccer ball from the back of the SUV. "Here," he says, leaving the ball in front of Baymax. "Go crazy, big guy."

Baymax bends down and tries to grab the ball, but with his short arms and butter-ball body, he can't quite reach it. His hands keep pushing the ball even further out of his reach, so he starts chasing it around the cargo bay, like an overgrown inflatable dog. I can't help but laugh at the sight - it's surprisingly cute.

Stark, meanwhile, looks from Hiro to Tadashi to Skye, and back again. "Hey, I dunno what you guys are tryin' to say here. I mean, I'm damn good at computers and robotics and shit, but I'm not Iron Man. I didn't code Ultron to do...what he did today. That wasn't me."

"You said it yourself, though," I point out. "It's an AI. Doesn't that mean it learns like a human?"

"'He,'" Stark grumbles. "These guys call their creation 'he,' so why can't I?"

"True," Hiro says. "Then again, it's easier to call Baymax 'he' 'cause he's got a body, a personality. Ultron has a personality, but no body."

Stark rolls his eyes. "Uh-huh."

"So what are we gonna do about Ultron?" Skye asks. "I'd suggest putting him in the Faraday cage, 'cause who knows how long it's gonna be before he decides to infect the whole plane?"

"Good idea, Skye," says Coulson, who comes back into the cargo bay carrying a skateboard. "Tony, if you please…?"

Stark's eyes twitch as he looks at Coulson. "Um…"

"Trust me, Ultron will be in good hands," Coulson says, putting the skateboard down.

Stark pauses a moment before very reluctantly passing the Surface to Coulson. "You know I do my homework on that thing, right?"

"You won't have to worry about homework for a little while," Coulson says. "You're on an extended, excused absence. That goes for you too, Peter," he adds before going back into the lab long enough to put Ultron into a metal box.

Hiro stands next to Baymax's box, watching the 'bot continue to chase the soccer ball for a few seconds. When Coulson returns, Hiro asks, "So what's the 'board for?"

"It's for Peter," Coulson says.

"Say what?"

"So you can try out another ability you never knew you had," says Coulson, sliding the skateboard across the floor to me. "Go on. Try it, Peter."

I stare at the skateboard warily. "Um..."

"What's the matter?" Stark asks, jumping out and 'boarding across the room. "You chicken?"

I can't help but laugh at the sight. Sure, some teenage guys (myself not included) seem incredibly at home on those things. Stark certainly is - he can do more than a few tricks with it. But I'm pretty certain nobody's ever seen a dude ride a skateboard while wearing a tux.

"Your turn, Petey," Stark says, coming back and giving the skateboard to me.

I furrow my eyebrows at him. "Don't call me 'Petey.' Only my friends call me that."

"You mean _friend_ _,_ " Stark corrects me.

I narrow my eyes like I'm about to zap his ass with heat vision. He's right, but the truth hurts.

"You're really good at this, you know," Coulson says. "You just don't remember yet."

"Speak for yourself," I scoff. "I've never been on a skateboard in my life. I can't do this."

In the corner, Hiro snorts. "This from the guy who saved me by liftin' a three-hundred-pound inflatable robot." He taps his foot against the side of Baymax's red box.

"Just do it already, Peter," Skye says. She tries to lay a comforting hand on my shoulder - for old time's sake, maybe?

But I squirm away, muttering, "Don't touch me."

"Coulson's not gonna let you leave until you do," Skye says.

I look at Coulson, who's standing in front of the lab door with his arms crossed. Then I look at Stark, Hiro, Tadashi, and Skye, all of whom are staring at me. Probably expecting me to shoot webs from my wrists, too.

"You know how they say you never forget ridin' a bike?" Skye asks. "It's kinda true. Just let your muscle memory take over, and you'll be fine." She reaches for my shoulder again, but at a glare from me, she backs off. I have to wonder, did she really develop feelings for me while on her "mission" at Augustine? If so, gross. I'm underage, for God's sake.

I grit my teeth and roll my shoulders, then let the 'board hit the floor, wheels down. Then I step onto it and try to copy the tricks Stark demonstrated before.

To my amazement, I manage to pull them off very well. I even manage to ride halfway up the walls of the cargo bay. And, even more impressively, I manage to perch there. The 'board hangs off a little ledge of sorts, less than four inches wide, and I have one hand stuck to the wall.

And then the whole Spider-Man thing comes to mind again. Then I know what to do next.

I put my other hand on the wall, then kick the skateboard away. It clatters down to the floor, fifteen feet down, while my hands stick to the wall. I don't know how they do it - they just do.

"Show-off!" Stark snarks at me from below.

The three Hamadas give impressed whistles.

Coulson, meanwhile, calls up, "Come down, Spider-Man. I have to show you something else."

I leap down from my perch, landing on my feet. My knees bend as I land, and when I rise back up, I can see the smirk being slowly wiped from Stark's face.

"Follow me, boys," Coulson says, beckoning Stark and me forward, into the lab.

I exchange glances with Stark. "Down the rabbit hole, am I right?"

"You said it, not me."

"Hey, boss!" Skye calls out before the lab doors close. "Should we expect May and the rest to come back anytime soon?"

"They're on their way," Coulson says. "They just need to pick up...um...a couple more people."

"Define 'a couple more people,'" Skye says, narrowing her eyes.

"You'll recognize them when they get here," Coulson says.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"All in good time, Skye," Coulson says. "Boys?"

Stark and I look at each other again, then I shrug my shoulders and follow Coulson through the lab, into the heart of the plane.


	3. Here's A Few Subway Tokens

_**CHAPTER 3: HERE'S A FEW SUBWAY TOKENS**_

 *****GWEN*****

I edge out of the gym as people start looking around, wondering what to do next. Nobody seems to notice me leave - nobody except Clint Barton. He's pretty easy to spot, because he's wearing one of his many purple-and-gray-striped T-shirts. It's got long sleeves too, so it's a very odd choice for this time of year now that the weather's warming up. Then again, this is San Castiel we're talking about. We're so close to San Fransokyo that we get foggy days even in the middle of summer.

Clint catches my eye and walks up to me, asking, "Did you see what happened?"

"Yeah," I say. "Didn't you?"

Clint shakes his head. "I just saw Peter walkin' out the gym with the Hamadas, and I'm like, what gives? Peter doesn't hang out with them." He scratches the back of his head. "Or, at least, he doesn't hang out with Skye."

"Yeah, no kidding," I laugh. "Everyone can see she creeps him out, the way she's so...how should I put it...affectionate with him."

"So what happened, then?" Clint asks. "I tried to ask Peter, but the Hamadas just kept on movin', and he followed them before he could talk to me."

I take a deep breath and give Clint the story, in the shortest possible version. Even that takes me a full five minutes. When I'm done, his only response is a shocked stare. "That's exactly what I looked like when it happened," I say.

Clint snorts under his breath. "Well, you'd probably have still looked hella pretty with your jaw on the floor." My eyes twitch, and I glare at him for a moment, just long enough to force him to look down in shame. "Sorry."

"It's all right," I say. "Now maybe if you called Peter and asked him again what's goin' on? I'd call him myself, but I don't have his number."

"How'd you know I-"

"You work on the paper with him, right? Of course you'd have his contact info."

Clint nods silently, then grabs his phone and makes the call. He holds his phone up to his ear for a moment, then says, "Hey, Parker, it's Barton. Um, Gwen just told me what went down in the gym today, and I'd like to know if I should have your aunt report you missing or anything like that. Call me back when you get this, okay? Thanks. Bye."

"No answer?" I ask.

"Went straight to voicemail," Clint says. "Which either means Pete's phone is off, or destroyed. He almost always answers it when it's on."

"Hmm," I say. "Any other ideas? What about if we try and find the Hamadas?"

Clint frowns. "Where would you look, though? At their house?"

I shake my head. "I doubt they'd have gone there...but that's a start. Maybe we'll find some kind of clue there."

"I know where they live," Clint says. "I, uh, did an interview with Hiro and Tadashi a couple weeks ago for the science fair, and I ended up goin' to their place 'cause they had to work at home on their project anyway."

"The inflatable health-care robot?" I ask.

"No, actually, it was something else," Clint says, swiping the screen on his phone so he can double-check the Hamadas' address. "Something with this shape-changing metal thing. Like out of _Transformers_ , you know?"

"Interesting," I say. "So where do they live, then?"

"In the city, believe it or not," Clint says, pocketing his phone.

"The city?" I raise my eyebrows. I guess I shouldn't be surprised - Augustine's a pretty popular magnet school that attracts the scientifically-inclined from all over the Bay Area. Hell, even Tony Stark isn't a San Castiel local - he lives in Hayashi Hills, if I remember correctly. "What part of the city?"

"I had to take BART up there and get off at 24th and Mission," Clint says. "If we hurry, we could probably get there in half an hour or less."

"Let's go, then," I say, leading the way out the building.

Five minutes later, we're in San Castiel BART station. Because it's a Spare The Air day, BART travel is free - but at first, I pull out my Clipper card out of habit when Clint and I reach the gate, not seeing that it's already wide open and waiting for us to go through. Then, we ride the escalator down to the underground platform and wait for the train to arrive.

The train ride into San Fransokyo takes about half an hour, just like Clint suggested. It's only about a twenty-mile distance - ten as the crow flies, but the BART tracks have to detour around San Castiel Mountain on the southern edge of the city. It's not underground the whole way, but the aboveground part is only when we get into the city itself, and then it goes under again.

"If Petey were here," Clint says, plugging his nose as we go into the second tunnel and the air pressure rises, "he'd point out how bipolar the geography around here is. All these hills poppin' up all over the place, and water on three sides."

"No wonder real estate here is so expensive," I say. "There's just not enough land for everyone."

"You're tellin' me."

We finally get to 24th Street/Mission station after a long ride through the tunnel. This station apparently is even deeper underground than the one in San Castiel - the escalator ride up to the entrance level takes a full minute, and even then we're still one story below street level.

"Okay, where to now?" I ask.

Clint consults his phone again, getting directions off his map app. (Haha, I made a rhyme.) "Hang on," he says. "Sometimes, after I've been out of service for a while, it's hard to get back in service again."

"Is that an old phone?" I ask, peering at the case - it does look like an older iPhone variety. I think it even has the older-style USB port for the connection and charger cables.

"Yeah, but it still works like a charm most of the time," Clint says. "I just never bothered upgrading 'cause my parents...my dad's been out of a job for a while, and he hasn't had a permanent job in almost five years, so we can't exactly afford the latest models right now."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"That's why I got into journalism class," Clint continues. "'Cause based on my dad's example, the tech industry is too competitive for me. I'm just not that pushy, you know?" He holds up his phone so he can get a better look at the screen; with so much glare from the sun, I imagine it's hard to see anything. "Finally. Come on, this way."

Clint leads me up and down the streets of the Mission district for a while, until eventually his phone chimes at us, like a car's GPS system, to tell us we've reached our destination. I look around and the first thing I see is a coffee shop on the first floor of a townhouse on the corner. "This is it?" I ask, sniffing the air and smelling baked goods.

"Yep." Clint walks through the glass door, and I follow him in. He goes up to the counter and starts talking to a middle-aged woman - her name tag reads "Cass." I gaze at the donuts and éclairs lining the shelves of a glass display case while Clint does all the talking. Various words and phrases filter into my brain - "Where's Peter?...I was told he'd be here...Okay...Thanks anyway...No, that's all right, he's got my number."

I stick around long enough to buy a maple-glazed donut - since my parents decided to cut down on their sugar intake, there's been no Saturday-morning trips to the donut shop in almost a year. That, and because Dad's a cop, he doesn't really want to perpetuate any stereotypes.

"Who was that woman?" I ask. "Not their mom, I'm guessing."

"What, just 'cause she's white instead of Asian?" Clint laughs. "The Hamadas are actually half-white, anyway. That lady is their Aunt Cass."

"Oh. So where are their parents?"

"No idea. I didn't ask."

"Uh-huh." The donut dissolves into sweet deliciousness as I start to eat it. I even let out a few little moans, prompting Clint to look funny at me.

"What?" I ask, a defiant edge to my tone. "You could've gotten one too, if you'd like."

"I'm tryin' to save my money," Clint says. "Remember? No permanent jobs in my household right now."

"You gonna get a summer job, then?"

"I think so."

"Where?"

Clint shuffles his feet. "Maybe at Elephant Bar?"

I nod approvingly. "At least it's a job. Do they still do that steak sandwich with only one bun?"

"I...uh...I don't think so. That's a thing there?"

"It was last time I ate there, which was, let's be honest, more years ago than I have fingers to - ow!" A small but heavy object falls onto my head. In my surprise, both of my hands fly to the top of my head to rub it, and I end up dropping my donut. "Crap," I groan, seeing the half-eaten donut on the ground. Luckily, the uneaten half is securely inside the paper wrapper, so I don't even need to worry about the five-second rule.

But as for the object that hit me - I have no idea what it was, and I don't see it anywhere else around me. "Clint, did you see anything?" I ask.

"No, I didn't - oh wait, what's that up there?" Clint points to an upper window of the Hamadas' house, where a funny-looking metal thing is sitting on the windowsill.

"How'd you spot that?" I ask, raising one hand to my forehead to shield my eyes from the sun. "You must have really good hawk eyes."

The thing on the windowsill raises a claw-like appendage, then drops a tiny metal ball that it's been holding. This time, Clint and I both duck out of the way, and we see the metal object break into a series of smaller ones. These smaller things are then carried away on the wind - but then I realize they are moving against the wind, not with it.

Then the thing leaps down and lands on the sidewalk in front of us. Now that we can finally get a good look at it, we see that it consists of three metal balls, each one with two roughly conical arms protruding from it. The uppermost ball has a yellow face painted on it, flashing a toothy grin.

"Huh," I say. "This must be one of Hiro's inventions."

"What makes you say that?"

"I dunno," I say. "The face seems like something a younger boy would put on his robot."

"Good point," Clint says. The robot jumps into the air, only getting about three inches off the ground. "Hey, you think he's tryin' to tell us something?"

The robot points down the street. I could swear it's making little squeaky noises of excitement every time it jumps and points. "Should we follow it?" I ask.

"Why not?" Clint says. "Maybe it'll get us a little closer to figurin' this crap out. And if it doesn't pan out, the BART station's that way anyway, so we can just go back home."

"True." I look down at the robot again. "Um, go get 'em, boy," I say. I know, it's a robot, not a dog. But the robot listens to me, scurrying down the street like a little jointed metal squirrel. Every so often, it races up a light pole, then swings from it until it can leap to the next one. I think it might just be showing off.

Before long, the robot leads us right back to the BART station. It slides effortlessly down the banister, then waves Clint and me impatiently down the stairs when it reaches the bottom long before we do. The gates are still open for free, so we pass through those. Then the robot spins around on one foot for a while before zeroing in on its next target - a vending machine.

"You think it's hungry?" I ask Clint, watching the robot jumping in vain, pointing vaguely at something inside the machine. Neither of us can figure out what it wants, until Clint thinks to lift the robot up so it can look. It actually shakes its head a few times as Clint moves it up and down the rows of snacks, until finally it settles on a pack of Gummi Bears, nodding until we're sure its head might fall off.

"I'll take care of this," I say, pulling out the change from my donut. It's more than enough for the Gummi Bears, so I deposit the money.

In the distance, I can hear an old-fashioned phone jangling loudly. I look around and see a small bank of pay phones on the other side of the station lobby. The robot perks up at the sound too, then jumps out of Clint's hands and zips on over to the phones.

"I'll follow it," I say. "You just get the candy. And the change."

I leave Clint to take care of that, then go over to the pay phone. The robot stands in front of the ringing one, and I pick it up. Even though I'm aware of how possibly germ-infested this public pay phone is, I hold the phone up to my ear and ask, "Hello?"

"Huh?" a boy's voice calls out - is that Hiro talking? "Who is this?"

"Is this-" I begin, but then I'm cut off when someone sneaks up behind me and holds a dangerously sharp-looking yellow disc near my neck.

"Where'd you get that robot?" a woman's voice whispers in my other ear.

I squirm a bit, trying to get away, but the woman's got too good a hold on me. I can still turn my head, though, and I yell, "Clint!"

Clint, who's talking to a tall dark-skinned blonde woman, whirls around, sees me, and runs across the lobby, yelling, "HEY! What's your problem, lady?"

"Go-Go, what the heck are you doing?" the blonde asks, trailing after Clint.

The woman with the sharp disc lets me go. I can finally see her - she's Asian, and goth, with a purple streak in her hair. "Just had to make sure she was okay, Honey," she says.

"I could've told you that," Honey says, rolling her eyes behind her red-framed glasses. She looks much more pleasant than this Go-Go lady, or whatever her name is. Her sunnier wardrobe (all yellow and white) definitely helps.

"Hi there," Honey says, flashing me peace signs with both hands. "I'm Honey Lemon, and this jumpy type here is Go-Go Tomago. Who are you?"

Clint and I introduce ourselves, then, like at the coffee shop, he does all the talking. "We're lookin' for our friend," he says. "His name is Peter Parker, and last time we saw him, the Hamadas took him somewhere. We don't know where."

"I might," Go-Go says. "They're still parked at the airport, right?"

Honey checks her phone. "Nobody's texted me sayin' they left, so I guess so, yeah."

"What are they doin' at the airport?" I ask.

"Part of their assignment with SHIELD, I think," Go-Go says. "Come on, let's go. If we hurry, we could still catch them."

"Yeah, maybe if you drive," Honey laughs.

Go-Go's eyes take on a dangerous gleam, and Honey's smile shrinks away with hilarious slowness. "No," she says emphatically. "Go-Go, last time you drove, you wrecked Wasabi's ride. My car's brand-new, too!"

"I promise I'll get us to the airport in one piece," Go-Go says, crossing her heart. "Now come on already!"

Clint and I stay behind while the two ladies run for the stairs. Honey soon turns around and asks, "Aren't you guys coming?"

"Um…" Clint starts.

"We kinda have to…" I say, but my voice trails off.

"Hiro's robot sure likes you," Go-Go remarks with a short laugh. I look down and see the robot wrapping its little arms around my ankle - the only part of me it can reach. At least it's not humping me like a dog. "If he didn't like you, trust me, you'd know about it," Go-Go adds.

I sigh heavily. "Okay. I guess you've convinced me. You comin', Clint?"

Clint looks around towards the escalator to the subway platform, then slumps his shoulders. "Yeah, I'll come with. It's not as if I really got anything else to do, you know what I mean?"

"Awesome!" cries Honey. She leads the way out of the station and over to a small Mazda van, where two men - one black, one white - are sitting inside already. The black man introduces himself as Wasabi, and quickly explains that it's because of his fondness for spicy sushi - "not," he insists, "for spillin' wasabi on my shirt. That was one time, people!"

Go-Go snickers as she gets into the driver's seat. "And hey, this time he brought it up himself. How's that for progress?"

Wasabi buries his face in his hands.

The white guy, who's sitting next to me in the backseat, raises his hands for high-fives from me and Clint. "'Sup, dudes? Name's Fred," he says, completing the skater-punk persona already shown in his attire - knit cap, long-sleeve tee, and cargo shorts. Apart from the beanie, Fred's outfit isn't all that different from the one Hiro Hamada was wearing today. The difference is that his clothes look faded and a little dirty, like they haven't been properly laundered. Maybe they're the kind of clothes that are deliberately made "vintage?"

Go-Go starts the engine. "One piece, Honey," she says, angling the rearview mirror so she can see her. "I promise."

"Just get on with it," Honey says, looking a bit worried.

No sooner does Go-Go start driving down the street than we all hear a faint rumble. Everyone cringes - we're all fearing the worst. The start of the next Big One.

It's not an earthquake, but there's still people screaming as they run out of the BART station. And before long, we see what they're running from - a bunch of creepy creatures with pale skin, pointed ears, and solid black eyes.

"Holy crap," Fred whispers, awestruck. "Dark Elves. They do exist!"

"Floor it!" Honey yells.

She doesn't need to tell Go-Go twice. The little van jumps out of its parking space and screeches its way down the street at high speed. I look back and see a number of Dark Elves following us.

One of them is armed with a huge crossbow, which it's priming with an arrow. Ready...aim...fire.

"They're shooting at us!" I yell.

"I can see that!" Go-Go swerves onto Mission Street, making a hard right.

Unfortunately, there's already a traffic jam in the making - we're clearly not the only ones trying to get out of the area. And the Elves are still following us, readying more arrows.

Go-Go curses under her breath. "Honey, I'm really sorry," she says, turning the steering wheel as far to the right as it will go, "but I think I'm gonna have to break my promise."

"What? No!" But it's too late. Even as Honey begs her to stop, Go-Go is already stomping on the gas, heading for the narrow gap between two cars ahead of us.


	4. Here's Your Ticket, Pack Your Bag

_**CHAPTER 4: HERE'S YOUR TICKET, PACK YOUR BAG**_

 *****GWEN*****

Even with our seatbelts on, we all swing around in the car as Go-Go swerves around the traffic. Soon, we lose sight of the Dark Elves - until they start firing their arrows through the cars around us, probably hoping to hit us. I try not to think about how many people could be getting hurt or killed by those things. The funny thing is, though, it seems the death toll from the Elves' arrows is all of zero. None of them actually pass through any people, if the lack of blood and guts emerging from the cars along with the arrows is anything to go by.

In fact, I come to suspect that they're missing things on purpose. They look like they could hit their targets every time if they wanted to, being supernatural abominations and all. But why would they…?

"Look ahead!" yells Wasabi, pointing frantically through the windshield.

"I see them!" Go-Go turns abruptly onto a different street, heading east. I catch a brief glimpse of a street sign and see that we're now on Cesar Chavez Street. Behind us, Dark Elves spill onto Cesar Chavez, coming off Mission from both north and south. Now that their distraction is over, they're not even trying to miss anymore. Every one of their arrows comes within a hair of striking the van. Our lives are pretty much in Go-Go's hands as she expertly uses them to drive us out of danger.

"Um...Go-Go," Honey says as we get onto 280, "where are we going?"

"To the airport, of course," Go-Go says.

"Are you crazy?" Honey cries. "We can't lead those things to the Bus! If they don't kill us, Coulson might!"

"We're too valuable for Coulson," Go-Go says. "And he's too good to kill anyone who isn't a bad guy."

Wasabi shakes his head. "I'm with Honey on this one. Those things are tryin' to kill us. What say we just stop here and make a stand?"

"You mean, fight the Dark Elves?" Fred asks. His grin expands. "Oh hell yeah. I'm game. Anyone else?"

"But...but we don't have any of our gear on us," Honey says. "Besides Go-Go, of course. And we got two civilians with us, so we can't-" She pauses, then looks into the backseat. "Gwen, Clint, what do you guys think?"

"What do we think?" I ask, flabbergasted. "We have absolutely no idea what to do!"

Clint nods energetically along with my words.

Honey turns back to Go-Go. "There you go. I say we make a break for it. The Bus has more than enough weapons to stop these Dark Elves anyway if we have to."

The van slows down a little bit - I guess Go-Go's taking a bit of pressure off the accelerator. "That's three in favor, three against," she says. "How do we break the tie, then?"

Fred bends down and grabs the little jointed robot, which has been sitting between his and Wasabi's seats this whole time. "Let's just ask Hiro's little Megabot thingy," he says, picking it up.

"Right," Clint laughs. "Go all Magic 8 Ball on that robot toy."

Fred ignores Clint and looks at the robot, doing his best to match its goofy painted-on grin. "Megabot, should we stop and fight the dreaded Dark Elves, or should we run to the Bus and fight them there?"

The robot's face spins around. Not its entire head, just its face, which switches the yellow grinny one for a nasty red one. Then it starts jumping all over Fred's head and shoulders, delivering vicious little robot-slaps everywhere it can reach. I start to laugh at the sight - clearly, the robot isn't actually hurting Fred, but it's still really funny to watch.

"Aaaugh!" Fred cries, trying to pull Megabot off of him. "Dude, Hiro, call it off already!"

I'm about to point out to Fred that Hiro's not here, but then Megabot ends its attack, sliding off Fred's face and onto his lap. Its face switches back to the grin, but then it inclines its head, as if in apology. It's hard to tell, though - the robot's expression and body language don't match up. Then again, the robot only has two faces to choose from anyway, and if it switches to the other one, apparently that means Attack Mode.

"All right," Wasabi says, picking Megabot up himself. "So is that a yes on the 'stop and fight' thing?"

Megabot's face changes back to the angry red one, and Wasabi drops it in horror. "No, no, no!" he yells rapidly. "Don't jump me!"

Another change of face for Megabot. "I wish this thing could talk," Fred groans. "Then we'd have an easier time tryin' to figure out what the heck it's sayin'."

Megabot crosses its stubby arms, then skitters over to Fred's window and starts tapping one of its metal hands rhythmically against the glass. "Is that Morse code?" I ask.

"I think so," Clint says. "I have no idea what it's saying, though. I can't understand Morse code. It always comes in way too fast. Like French."

"I know what you mean," I say, trying to listen to Megabot's tapping, but it's so fast I can't keep up with it. And I don't even know most of Morse code anyway, except for the three letters everyone knows: "· · · — · · ·" - that is, S.O.S.

Honey, however, seems to understand it pretty well. She grabs a notepad from the glove compartment and starts transcribing the message Megabot's been tapping out. "I only got a partial on that one, Hiro," she says when she's done. Curiously, she pronounces Hiro's name the Japanese way, with the "R" being halfway between an "R" and an "L." "Could you repeat that, please?"

Megabot starts tapping again, and Honey writes down more words on the notepad. "Okay, got it," she says. "Thanks."

Megabot jumps down into Fred's lap (Fred looks at it with a little bit of fear, as if he's afraid it'll go all angry-face on his family jewels) and takes a theatrical bow.

"So what did he say, Honey?" Go-Go asks.

Honey reads the message from the beginning. " _'Don't fight. Bring the Elves to the Bus. We'll take 'em down there.'_ And I think the ''em' was supposed to be 'them,' but I never caught the whole word." She looks around and is met by blank faces from everyone behind her. "And that's not important," she adds.

Go-Go stomps on the gas again. "I hate runnin' from a fight," she groans.

I look around and see a single Dark Elf running down the freeway after us. It's not drawing back its bow to shoot anymore, probably so it can concentrate on keeping pace with us. These things are hella fast - maybe cheetah fast - but as long as Go-Go keeps her foot on the accelerator, we'll be giving it a decent challenge.

In no time, we're barreling down 101 and heading out of the city. I'm surprised we don't get pulled over by the CHP or anybody before we reach our final destination. I'm also very surprised when Clint and I discover what our final destination actually is.

"SFO? Are you kidding?" I ask as Go-Go drives off the freeway and heads for a back entrance to the airport.

"We aren't exactly ready for international travel here," Clint says. "Gwen, do you have your passport?"

I pat my pockets for emphasis as I say, "No."

"Relax," Fred says. "We're not gonna leave the country. Not yet, anyway."

"Then why are we about to catch a plane?" I ask, pointing to the big black jumbo jet sitting on the tarmac about a hundred feet ahead of us. Sitting, but not idling - I can hear its huge engines already fired up.

"That's our ride," Fred says.

"I thought you said we were gonna catch a bus," Clint says warily.

"This is the Bus," Go-Go says, gesturing through the windshield as she steers the van onto a ramp leading into the plane's loading bay. "Even after SHIELD fell, these guys still got the best of the best. Unless it's our tech, of course."

"Yes. Of course." Honey's voice takes on a sickeningly sweet tone. "Maybe one of us can invent a piece of tech that repairs broken car mirrors?" She points out her window, and the rest of us crane our necks to look. Sure enough, the side mirror on Honey's door is missing, possibly broken off during our run through the crowded San Fransokyo streets.

"I promised I'd get us all to the Bus in one piece," Go-Go says, turning the van off and picking up the sharp yellow disc she'd brought with her. "By that, I meant all us people." She glances down at Megabot, whose face starts to change. "And Megabot. I said nothing about-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Honey says, waving her hands and grabbing her purse. "You're just lucky we're about to fight Dark Elves to the death, or I'd really let you know how seriously teed off I am right now."

She climbs out of the van, followed by the others. Clint and I hang back in the backseat, unsure of what to do. These guys clearly know what they're doing, getting suited up in crazy superhero-type outfits as they prepare for battle. I can even see Hiro hurriedly strapping on a dark purple armored suit and putting a similar red suit on his inflatable robot. Baymax, I think it was called. But wasn't it a medical robot? What's it doing getting ready to fight?

A loud rapping noise on the window startles Clint and me. Tadashi and Skye are both standing outside the van, holding a total of three guns between them. Two for Tadashi, one for Skye.

"Here," Tadashi says as I climb out, handing me the gun. "Don't worry, these things are specially designed. They'll work on anything, even Dark Elves."

I lift the gun in one hand, making sure to point it away from any humans. "What does it fire?" I ask. "Plain old bullets? Silver ones?"

"Icers, actually," Skye says. "Tranquilizers," she adds as I stare blankly at her. "We used to call 'em 'Night-Night Guns,' but that name kinda fell out of fashion, for obvious reasons."

"I dunno," Tadashi says, leveling his own Icer. "I still like the original name better."

"So do I," I say. "It makes more sense, given what it's used for." I look at Clint, who's halfway out the van door, one foot hovering over the floor. "Um, why is he still unarmed?"

"Oh, crap, I forgot," Skye says, smacking her forehead with her free hand. "Excuse me…" She goes into the back of another car - a black SUV sitting next to an old red Corvette - and extracts, of all weapons, a bow and a quiver full of arrows.

"Say what?" Clint asks, looking askance at the arrows. "I'm not exactly Katniss Everdeen here."

"Trust me, you're better than you know," Skye says. "I'll give you the same little mini-lecture I gave Peter - let your muscle memory guide you."

"What?" Clint looks shocked. "Peter can use this thing too?"

"Not exactly," Skye says. "But you saw him liftin' Baymax before, right?"

"I heard about it, but what does that have to do with - and hell," Clint says, looking around wildly, "where's Peter so he can tell me this himself?"

"If we survive this," Skye says, "the first thing we'll do is take you guys to Peter. Oh look, there's an Elf now!" She points out onto the tarmac, where a single Dark Elf, probably the same one that's been following us out of the city, is about to shoot an arrow. "Everyone stand back - this one's for Hawkeye!"

"Who's Hawkeye?" I ask.

"That's just what we call Clint here," Tadashi says, eyeballing Clint for a second.

"Me? What? But you guys don't even know me!"

"Shoot it!" Skye yells, pointing at the Elf again.

She doesn't need to tell Clint twice. He raises the bow, draws it back in only a couple of seconds, then fires. His arrow strikes the Elf right in the head, causing it to sink slowly to its knees, then collapse completely. Like a dead walker on _The Walking Dead._

Clint looks at the bow, gasping and stuttering as he tries to speak. "How...h-how...how did I do that?" he asks.

"No time to explain," Tadashi says. "They're really comin' en masse now. Shoot first, ask questions later, guys!" He sticks his head out over the roof of Honey's van and fires his Night-Night Gun a few times. The two Elves nearest to the plane both get winged on the arm, but don't go down the way the other one did.

Not yet, anyway.

The rest of the job is taken care of by Hiro and all his friends. Hiro and Baymax fly around the Elves, running interference and providing a substantial target for their arrows. Fred is dressed as some kind of mini-Godzilla creature with a hole for a mouth, through which it actually breathes flames. It seems the Dark Elves don't like fire; they run screeching from every blast Fred sends their way. Wasabi has a pair of laser blades, one attached to each hand, and with these, he's able to literally cut down several Elves, usually at the knee, but sometimes at the waist. Go-Go, meanwhile, takes off more Dark Elf heads with her lethal discs.

Honey's weapon of choice, though, is the one I find the most impressive. Every so often, she taps her purse - at one point, she turns around, and I can see a light-up keyboard on the side. Then a bright neon-colored ball rolls out, and she throws it at a cluster of Dark Elves. The result is impressive, if disgusting - the balls explode into colorful, sticky goop, trapping the Elves like rats in the glue traps my parents used to buy for the house.

Between all of this, and the constant fire from the Night-Night Guns (and Clint's bow and arrows), the Dark Elves don't last very long in their assault. Within five minutes, the tarmac is littered with their corpses, not to mention soaked in blood, brain matter, and whatever Honey's balls of gunge are made out of.

"Everyone inside!" Skye orders as soon as there are no live enemies left to speak of. Once everyone's gathered back inside the cargo bay, Skye places a quick call to someone named Coulson - I remember Honey and Go-Go had mentioned the name before. Whoever he is, he's probably inside the plane, because as soon as Skye lets him know that the threat has been neutralized, the cargo bay ramp closes, sealing us inside. Then the plane takes off.

"Wait a minute," I ask. "Who's gonna clean up the mess we've just made?"

"We've got it covered, don't worry," Honey says. "My chemicals break down harmlessly within an hour or so."

Skye holsters her Night-Night Gun and points to a spiral staircase at the back of the room. "If you guys wanna see Peter and Tony," she says, "they're upstairs in the media room. I bet they've already started the movie by now, but you're welcome to join them. You've probably only missed the first couple of minutes anyway."

"What movie?" Clint asks.

" _The Amazing Spider-Man 2,_ " Hiro cuts in. "But not the Amazing Spider-Man 2 you guys might know. This one is literally out of this world."

I look up at Hiro, who's already halfway up the spiral steps. "I'm almost afraid to find out what that means," I say.

"Come on up and find out," Hiro says. "I'll lead the way."

"You're gonna watch that movie again?" Tadashi asks, raising his eyebrow.

"Why not? I love that movie." Hiro looks down at Wasabi, who's busy removing his laser gauntlets. "So do you, don't you? Electro is basically evil you!"

"Oh, what, just 'cause I'm a black guy who's into electric crap?" Wasabi rolls his eyes, but then grins at Hiro. "Want some popcorn?"

"Ranch powder and extra salt?"

Wasabi rubs his belly. "Dude, you read my mind. You sure that neural-cranial transmitter doohickey isn't rubbin' off on you?"

Hiro laughs and climbs all the way up to the top step. "Let's just get the snacks, buddy," he says.

Clint and I look at each other, shrug our shoulders, and follow Hiro and Wasabi upstairs. Hiro stops to point out the door to the media room before he and Wasabi detour over to the kitchen.

We step into the media room, and the first thing we see is Peter and Tony sitting next to each other in movie-theater-style reclining seats, complete with cup holders in the armrests. I then look past them and see the images on the screen. It's the first shot of _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ to feature the title character, free-falling over the middle of New York before using his webline to swing out and start following an Oscorp truck hijacked by Russian mobsters.

It's a funny scene, and I laugh out loud when Spidey knocks on the driver's door, nonchalant as ever. Peter turns around and waves to me and Clint silently. He's not laughing - which is my first clue that something's wrong. Unless you don't have a sense of humor, there should be no reason for this scene not to leave you in stitches.

I take a seat next to Peter, with Clint coming in behind him. I'm tempted to ask what's going on, but that would mean talking over a movie, and I'm not that rude.

It's not long before I get a clue about why these people are having us watch this specific movie. Eventually, Spider-Man gets stuck to the front of the Oscorp truck, and he also gets a phone call. As he answers it, the scene shifts between Spidey and his girlfriend, who's waiting for him to show up at their high school graduation.

But it's not the same scene I remember. Sure, the settings are identical, but the dialogue has a couple of noticeable differences. Mostly when Spidey and his girl address each other by name - calling each other not Cade and Sarah, but Peter and Gwen.

And there's also the fact that the girl on the other end of the phone call - the girl who happens to share a name with me - is so very obviously not being played by Jennette McCurdy. She's blonde, sure, but her hair is lighter and straighter. And she's not quite as full-figured.

In fact, she looks exactly like me.


	5. I'm Caught In The Middle

_**CHAPTER 5: I'M CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE**_

 *****PETER*****

Gwen's mouth drops open as she recognizes herself on the screen. I can only imagine the shock she must be experiencing right now. It's probably nothing compared to what I'm feeling at the moment, though.

"That's...that's…" Gwen can't even speak.

"I know, right?" Stark says. "I dunno where they got scans of you guys' faces, but damn, the CGI job is amazing." Gwen and I both glare at him. "What? I can't be the only one thinkin' it. You, um…" He snaps his fingers until he remembers Barton's name. "Clint, tell me you agree with me. There's no way this shit's real."

"I'm afraid this 'shit,'" says Coulson as he comes back into the room, complete with air quotes, "is in fact real." He looks at me in particular. "And it's more real for you than for the others, isn't it, Peter?"

"I...um...what?" How can Coulson possibly know what's going on in my head? Unless he's telepathic or something? Wouldn't surprise me.

"It's all right," Coulson says, sitting down next to Barton. "You've never had any kind of therapy, have you? Well, think of this as group therapy. It's a safe space. You can tell us what's troubling you."

I look at everyone else, seeing them look back at me with concern on all their faces. Even Stark, as much as he's trying to look detached and neutral, can't resist that human impulse.

"I haven't told anyone about this," I say.

"So there is something wrong, then," Coulson says. "I promise, I won't think you're crazy or lying or anything. In my line of work, you have to have some level of mental illness in order to succeed anyway."

I sigh and drop my head into my hands. Then I take another look at the screen. The movie's still playing, and the graduation is over. The Spider-Man who looks exactly like me, right down to the light stubble on his face, is looking at Gwen - not Sarah Reagan - while she gathers with her own family, and behind them is the ghost of her father, a specter only Spider-Man can see.

It's supposed to be Sarah's father, but he looks different. A little younger, a little more handsome. And somehow, I know he's Gwen's real father.

"I'm gonna tell the truth here," I say. "But I don't even believe what I'm seein' myself."

"Go on," Coulson says.

I sigh again. "Okay. I've been dreaming that I was Spider-Man. And that you were Sarah Reagan, Gwen."

"I was Sarah Reagan?" Gwen asks. "Huh. That doesn't sound so bad."

"But in my dream, it's always the scene where Sarah dies." I look at Gwen, seeing horror dawn in her eyes. "And because it's you in the dream instead of Sarah...you're the one who dies instead. Every time I try to stop it, but I can't."

"You...what…?" Gwen is lost for words.

Coulson nods gravely. "And now those dreams aren't just dreams anymore, are they, Peter? Seeing the real record of what happened has reawakened your memories."

"Are you telling me this is real?" I ask, gesturing at the screen. "It can't be. It's just a movie."

Coulson brings his hands together. "I'm gonna have to tell you kids a little story. A few years ago, me and my team, we encountered an insane man. An assassin. He called himself Deadpool, and for a very long time, we couldn't take him down. It didn't help that he could heal like nothing we'd ever seen before.

"Of course, eventually, we caught up to him. How and when isn't important. It's what happened after we caught him that you'll really want to hear." Coulson looks at the screen. "The strange thing about Deadpool was, he was convinced he was living in a comic book, and that everyone he talked to was just a reader. He thought he was breaking the fourth wall all the time, as it were."

"So...he was schizo?" Stark asks.

"It was more than that, though," Coulson says. "My team scanned his brain, and we confirmed that he was forever caught between two universes, mentally speaking. Our home world - that is, the home world for myself and my team - and this world, where we are now."

"You're not from this world?" Barton asks, laughing a bit. "So, what, you guys are aliens?"

"No, no, we're all human here," Coulson says with a quick grin. "We eventually found our way to this universe, to Deadpool's world, and after we brought him here, his symptoms diminished a great deal. It was like being back home helped him recover his grip on reality."

"Symptoms of what?" Stark asks. "Deadpool Syndrome?"

"That's exactly what Skye called it," Coulson says. "It's not exactly something you'd find in the DSM, but we were able to pinpoint a sort of symptom list. Continuous breaks from reality, remembering memories you don't even have, that sort of thing.

"Also, with Deadpool's return home, he was able to remember why he was in our world to begin with. You see, in our world, the Avengers, like what you see in the movies, they're real. Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor...they all exist." Coulson stops as Barton and I begin laughing inappropriately loudly. "What? Did I make a joke? I usually don't mean to, but sometimes it just happens."

"You mean to tell me," Barton says between snorts of laughter, "that Thor Odinsson is supposed to be some kind of Avenger? I mean, he's cool, but not that cool."

"I'm glad you made that leap of logic," Coulson says. "The Avengers do exist...but very recently, they all vanished without a trace. As did Spider-Man, who for whatever reason never affiliated with the Avengers, though my boss at SHIELD was always interested in taking him on. And now, we've found them here, in a world where they don't belong."

"So you're saying I'm Spider-Man," I say slowly, "and Gwen is Sarah Reagan-"

"No," Coulson interrupts. "Gwen is Gwen. Sarah Reagan is entirely fictional, a creation of this world to mask your true memories. Clearly, it failed, however, because you were still able to remember the truth, at least in your dreams. Also, while we're on the subject, Clint is Hawkeye, and Tony is Iron Man."

"No, I'm not," Barton and Stark say simultaneously.

"That's not possible," Stark adds. "How can it be? We're teenagers. Hawkeye and Iron Man are...well...men."

"We've determined that, for some reason, when you were brought to this world, you were all made into teenagers," Coulson says. "Why, we still have no idea. But the fact remains, someone or something brought you to this alternate universe, for reasons unknown, and wiped all your memories so you were, effectively, made normal." He looks at me again. "And now you've not only started recovering your memories, Peter, but you've also started rediscovering your powers."

"That brings up another hypothesis of ours," says a female voice - not Skye's. This girl has an English accent, and is all white as opposed to half-Asian. "Jemma Simmons," she says. "I'm the team's resident biologist."

"Someone tell me which of the Avengers have actual superpowers, as opposed to high-tech toys or unusual weapons proficiency," Coulson says. "No disrespect to you, Clint, Tony."

"How can we be offended by that?" Stark asks, rolling his eyes. "If I'm really Iron Man without his memories, I wouldn't even remember all the sweet stuff I'd invented, would I?"

Coulson nods. "Right. But, again, the Avengers with superpowers…?"

"Thor, of course," I say, ticking his name off on my finger. "Hulk, Captain America...that's it, right?"

"Exactly," says Simmons. "You're not the only one remembering what's really happened, Mr. Parker. It seems that those with superpowers...whatever wiped their memories didn't take as well as for those without. That said, though, it is still possible to trigger recall for non-gifted individuals."

"How can you be sure?" Gwen asks.

"We've already done it once," Simmons says. "Just once, though. And we're not supposed to talk about it yet, are we, boss?"

Coulson shakes his head. "We need to keep that particular experiment going as long as possible. It's painful, I know."

"But can we attempt it again?" Simmons asks. Her words, taken by themselves, might suggest that she's excited to do another experiment. But her voice is careful not to betray any emotion.

"That's what these three are here for," Coulson says. "We'll see how quickly we can reawaken their memories. Starting with you, Gwen, since we've got your movie on right now anyway. I should warn you, though - it's gonna be a huge shock to your system. You might end up in a catatonic state, even. Because...well, to put it mildly, what you'll see on the screen if you choose to continue, you'll never be able to unsee."

Gwen puts her hand over her mouth. I know she's seen the movie before - not the version we're watching right now, but the one that I saw in theaters. She must know what's coming.

"I'll do it," she says, her jaw stiffening. "If I have these memories you're talkin' about, go ahead and unlock them."

Now it's my turn to look at Gwen with concern - and maybe a little bit of fear - instead of the other way around. "Are you sure about this?"

"Don't you need some kind of parental consent for this?" Stark asks. "Legally speaking, of course. I mean, you're not a minor, are you?"

"My parents would never consent to this, I bet," Gwen says. "But I feel like I have no choice anyway."

"That's not true," Coulson says. "You can absolutely elect not to go forward. And besides, it's possible that since you're not gifted, your memories will take a little more work to coax out of your unconscious than simply watching a movie."

"Don't you mean 'subconscious?'" Skye asks.

"I think he does mean 'unconscious,'" says Simmons.

"I'm gonna do it," Gwen says. "That's it. No more questions. Let's just get it over with."

Coulson opens his mouth again, then nods silently instead. He then gets up and goes to the back of the room, where he picks up a remote control and uses it to navigate to the one scene to which we all knew he was going to jump.

The scene that's been in my nightmares for weeks.

The scene that's sure to be in Gwen's nightmares too after this moment.

I watch as Gwen stares at the screen, her facial expressions disturbingly mirroring those of her on-screen counterpart. But mostly the helpless shock when movie-Gwen is falling to her death.

At the moment when it actually happens, here-and-now-Gwen actually gasps and slumps forward in her seat, very slowly. For a second, my heart stops - is she dead for real too?

Then she raises her head, tears falling silently from her eyes.

I'm the first one to offer her a hug. She stiffens at first, then her arms wrap around me. I can feel her breath on my neck, the heat coming in spurts as she breathes raggedly through her sobs.

"I...I...I remember." Gwen's voice is reduced to a breathy whisper.

"What do you remember?" I ask.

Gwen blinks, her eyes still glistening and wet. "I remember...I remember dying."

At this point, she gets up and leaves the room, trying her hardest to make sure we can't hear her crying. It's not working, though. I wait a few seconds before following her out the door and down the hall. Along the way, I pass by a little round porthole and see that the plane's already in the air. I hadn't even noticed we'd taken off.

Gwen is sitting under another porthole, her shoulders shaking. "It's all right," I say, my eyes welling up with tears as well. "I'm here for you."

"You...you say that now, but you were there for me when I died too."

"I know." I hold Gwen tightly, using the back of my hand to wipe the tears from her face. "I know."

There are really no words to express the pain we both feel. The memories she's recovered, the memories that have been creeping into my dreams...how any human being can live with them is beyond me. The moment is made even more strange by my feelings for Gwen. I now fully understand that what I've got isn't just some schoolboy puppy-love crush. In my sort-of past life, and in this one, I genuinely love her, and seeing her in this terrible state is really doing a number on my own emotions.

But having her in my arms feels so natural and perfect, no matter what the circumstances.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," says Coulson's voice. He's standing a few feet away from us, with everyone else who had been in the media room hanging back a little more. "At least your reaction wasn't as violent as we expected."

Gwen pulls out of my grasp and stands up. As I follow suit, she says, "That's...good to know."

I smother a chuckle. I can easily see Gwen using humor as a defense mechanism. She must have inherited it from her dad. Another memory of mine eerily paralleling the _Amazing Spider-Man_ movies involves me trying to warn her dad about the Lizard, only for him to start cracking jokes about how he's not the mayor of Tokyo.

And another memory of mine resurfaces right now, in which I see Gwen's dad dying after getting slashed up by said Lizard. Coulson didn't show us the first _Amazing Spider-Man_ movie, but I can guess that there's a version of that with me and Gwen and Gwen's dad in there as characters.

"What are we gonna do now?" I ask. "You said we were goin' to New York, but what's the point of that if you've already started us gettin' our memories back?"

"Not all of your memories are back," Coulson says. "The movies help, but they can't call back everything. The best thing we've found is to take you back to where you came from, the way we did with Deadpool."

Hiro bursts out of another room - probably the kitchen, because Wasabi comes out right after him with popcorn in hand. "We're about to go through the gate!" Hiro yells.

"Gate? What gate?" asks Stark.

Skye cracks a smile and rubs her hands together. "Oh, you're gonna love this," she says. "Everyone look out the window...now!"

We all gather around the portholes to watch. Within seconds, a huge black ring, just big enough for the plane to pass through it, comes into view. It's floating in the air, and in its center is a shining light.

"What, that leads to the other universe you were talkin' about?" asks Barton.

"And you're sayin' that when we're there, we'll get our lost memories back?" Stark asks.

Coulson shakes his head. "You don't have to be back home to recover your memories. Like we said, though, it does help if you're back home."

The plane goes through the gate, and for a second, the light shines through the windows. I'm forced to close our eyes and shield them - even then, the light nearly blinds me. When it's all said and done, though, we're able to look out the portholes again and see the gate behind us now. The weather outside has changed as well - we were passing through sunny skies before, but now we're surrounded by fluffy white clouds.

Coulson's phone rings, and he consults the screen. "I have to take this," he says. "So you kids probably won't see me again until we land in New York, and…" He takes the call before his phone can stop ringing. "What've you got for me, Hunter? No, we just came back through the gate…" His voice trails off as he leaves us, heading up towards the cockpit.

Coming from the other end of the hallway is Baymax, squeezing his inflated bulk through the double doors. " _I heard someone crying_ ," he says. " _Is everyone all right?_ "

Tadashi comes up behind Baymax. "This isn't a random self-activating thing," he says. "He really did hear someone crying. He's got better ears than most humans."

Skye looks from Gwen to Baymax. "I dunno about you, but I think Gwen could do with a hug, big guy."

Baymax turns to Gwen and inclines his head slightly. " _Scan complete,_ " he says. " _You are showing signs of emotional distress. I believe Skye is right. You do need a hug, don't you?_ " He walks up to Gwen on his stubby little legs, then wraps one arm around her while using his free hand to pat her head. " _Don't worry. It'll be all right. There, there._ "

I can't help but laugh. "That's gotta be the most adorable thing I've ever seen."

"It's what he'd say to me if he ever came up to me when I was feelin' down," Hiro says.

"You, feelin' down?" Stark asks. "I don't think that's even possible."

"You'd be surprised," Skye says.

" _It's true,_ " says Baymax. " _As a pubescent young man, Hiro can be quite prone to mood swings from time to time._ " I walk up and join Baymax and Gwen in their hug. " _Group therapy,_ " he says. " _That's a very good idea. Would anyone else like to join in?_ "

I look at the others. Barton shrugs, then comes around to Gwen's other side. Seconds later, Stark follows him. Hiro and Skye join in as well.

"Someone feeling cold again?" Honey asks, walking up behind Tadashi. "Oh, wait, no. He doesn't even have his heater on."

" _That reminds me, does anyone want the heater?_ " Baymax asks.

"No thanks," Gwen says. "I think we're good."

" _Does that mean you are satisfied with your care?_ " Baymax asks.

Gwen looks up at me, then at Hiro. "Should I say yes?"

" _I cannot deactivate until you are satisfied with your care,_ " Baymax says.

Gwen sighs, then moves out of the group hug. "Okay," she says.

Baymax just stands there, blinking slowly. "It's like _Millionaire_ with the 'final answer' thing," Tadashi says. "You have to say the exact words to get him to deactivate."

Gwen nods. "Okay. I'm satisfied with my care."

The red box zips out from behind Tadashi and Honey. Baymax gives a wave, then he steps into the box, which closes up on him. The box then leaves the hallway and passes through the double doors after Tadashi holds them open.

"Yeah, well…" Wasabi scratches the back of his neck, almost dropping his popcorn as he does so. "Who's hungry?"


	6. Heartbeat City

_**CHAPTER 6: HEARTBEAT CITY**_

 *****PETER*****

Hiro and Wasabi lead the rest of us back into the media room, where _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ is still paused on the scene where I'm standing over a grave. Gwen's grave, I realize with a sickening jolt. Thankfully, Hiro goes over to the DVD player quickly and switches that disc for something a little sweeter and fluffier - another favorite of mine, _The Nightmare Before Christmas._

Unfortunately, I don't really have it in me to concentrate on the movie. Because while everyone else is sitting together and talking animatedly about what Coulson might have in mind for us to do in New York, I see Gwen sitting apart from the others, rocking slightly in her seat.

I guess she wasn't quite satisfied with Baymax's care after all. Maybe I can help her feel better? Then again, there's not much else I can give her besides hugs and sweet words.

I sit next to Gwen, watching her continue to rock back and forth for a few seconds before she notices me. "Hey, Peter," she says. "What's up?"

I shrug, sparing a second to glance over at the others assembled halfway across the room. "Just countin' the seconds till they start bombarding us with questions." I take her hand and rub her knuckles with my thumb - a memory of me doing that before has just surfaced in my brain.

"Speaking of questions, I got one for you," Gwen says. "Do you remember our first kiss?"

"You remember it too?"

Gwen manages to smile for a split second. "I remember you were tryin' to tell me you were Spider-Man, and you couldn't get the words out, so you just showed me your webline. I think you hit me with it right on my back, then you spun me around and, well…"

I laugh lightly. "Are you just remembering that scene from the movie, or are you remembering it for real?"

"I...I…" Gwen pauses. "I dunno. The only thing I remember for real, I think, is me dying. Oh, and that time you came to my room all banged up and I was cleaning your wounds."

"Haha, of course you would remember that one," I say. At that time, I'd been shirtless. And naturally, we started making out right there in Gwen's room.

"Damn right, bug boy." Gwen lays her head on my shoulder. "That's what I called you, right?"

"That's how we know it's a real memory, I bet," I say. "Nobody remembers movie lines like that."

"I dunno," Gwen says. "I've sometimes overheard you and Clint talkin' movies, and you can quote 'em a mile a minute."

"I usually get 'em wrong, though." I try to concentrate on my memory of the shirtless make-out. It had been after a fight with the Lizard, and I'd had some pretty nasty wounds on my chest. How I didn't get infected with some kind of lethal reptilian disease, I have no idea.

I want to think about where exactly Gwen and I had been at the time. Did I ever look out the window and see the New York skyline, like the movie shows? Or was it in San Castiel? Either way, I don't exactly remember getting a glimpse of the outside world. Mostly because my mind was entirely in that one room at the time. It was a safe space.

The memories of sharing passionate kisses with Gwen when we were already in a pretty suggestive position also get me thinking of something else - did we, by any chance, turn in our V-cards? It didn't have to necessarily be that night - but as the memory progresses, it moves on to me putting my Spider-Man suit back on (and while that suit is really cool-looking, it's also got a tendency to bind in certain sensitive places) and carrying Gwen with me as I swing over the city on my weblines.

At that point, the memory ends, so I have no idea how intimate we got that night. Or any other night - the most I can remember is kissing her. On the mouth, of course.

I decide to put that thought aside, though. It doesn't seem quite as important, given the real issues we're facing right now.

I look again at the others and briefly catch Stark's eye. He then gets up and walks over to us, sitting behind Gwen. "Hey, guys," he says. "Not gonna hang out with the rest of us?"

Gwen shakes her head. "Nope. I don't really feel like hanging out right now."

"Yeah, I get it." Stark's about to leave his seat, but then he stops and asks, "Gwen, I...well, I hope you don't mind me askin' this, but...what's it like? Dying, I mean."

I glare at him. "Insensitive much?"

"No, it's okay," Gwen says, turning so she can look at Stark properly. "Well, it didn't hurt - maybe for a really tiny fraction of a second, but not long enough for me to really process it. But the really scary part was the emptiness. It was like, boom, now I was in a big black void. Like dreamless sleep. I couldn't really feel or hear or see anything."

"What about coming back to life?" Stark asks.

"I don't remember that," Gwen says. "I bet it would be even worse, though. Because if you think about it, dead things usually wanna stay dead."

"Unless they're you, of course," Stark says.

"And Coulson," chimes in Simmons, who's just now approaching us. As soon as the words are out, though, she claps her hands over her mouth, muttering a few swear words under her breath. "Oh my God, did I just say that out loud? Um, forget I said that, please?"

Stark's eyes nearly close as he puts on a devilish grin. "Your boss used to be dead? Whoa, baby. This I gotta hear."

"He doesn't like to talk about it, though," Skye says. "And after hearin' what they put him through, I can see why." She turns to Gwen. "I just hope that whatever they did to bring you back to life wasn't anywhere near as bad."

"If I know the way every story like that goes," Stark says, "it probably will be. Sorry, Gwen, but good guys don't get a break."

"Okay, I'm sorry I called you 'insensitive' before," I say. "I think I meant something a little more along the lines of, I dunno, 'cynical?'"

"I would've gone for 'brutally honest' myself," Stark says with a proud smile, "but that works too."

"Good to know."

I find the nearest porthole and look outside. The plane is descending, and I can see the East Coast approaching. We're heading right for New York. It's maybe forty or fifty miles ahead of us. I can almost pick out the shapes of the more recognizable skyscrapers. One World Trade Center, the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, and even two that I've only seen in superhero movies. Bryan Tower, with its distinctive "A" logo for the Avengers, and Sandcorp Tower - or, as the movie-based memories are telling me, Oscorp Tower - in all its glossy, futuristic 108-story glory. (So if Stark is supposed to be Iron Man, does that mean Bryan Tower is called Stark Tower in this world?)

Skye seems to confirm the answer to my question when she says, "The Stark Tower light is white. Good. That means we can land."

"You can see that from here?" I ask, peering again through the porthole. I wish I had my glasses with me. Sure, contacts are a little more aesthetically pleasing, or so society says, but they don't really improve my vision nearly as much as glasses do.

"You know what else?" I ask, turning back to Skye. "How did we get to New York so fast? Did that warp gate move us across the country or something?"

"No," Skye says. "It's in the same exact place in both universes. We can thank good old Alistair Krei for that." She sticks her tongue out. Hiro, who's standing behind Skye, rolls his eyes along with her.

"I'm guessing this Alistair Krei dude isn't the best guy around."

"You guess right," Hiro says. "Guy once tried to steal a science experiment of mine right from under my nose. Luckily, Tadashi's professor caught him and made him give up the stuff." He laughs, ruffling his own already-messy hair. "Oh, and also, this plane is just barely subsonic. It's, like, Mach 0.998 or something."

In the background, the movie ends, and Hiro takes the DVD out and puts it away in a hidden cabinet under the floor. Skye, meanwhile, takes me and Gwen aside so she can run the latest plan by us. "We're gonna start by takin' you guys to your old homes," she says. "We'll split up, take you separately so we can get it done a little faster. Peter, Fitz-Simmons and Hiro will take you to your place. After you're done lookin' there, you can come meet me and Clint at Gwen's place." She pauses, then looks around the room. "Oh, and Tadashi's going with Gwen and me, too," she adds. "And Tony can go with you, Peter."

"What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?" Gwen asks.

"I'll explain to you on the way," Skye says. "Peter, you're gonna want to find your dad's glasses. If our research is correct, they're gonna unlock a crucial memory of yours."

Fifteen minutes later, the plane lands at LaGuardia Airport, and immediately heads for a private hangar like the one where the plane was parked at SFO. Skye gets into one of the black SUVs with Barton, Gwen, and Tadashi, while I'm joined by Hiro and Stark in the other. Simmons is driving, and in the front passenger seat sits a guy with curly hair who talks in a strong Scottish accent. He introduces himself as Leo Fitz, and says he's the team's engineer. "Although," he adds, with a meaningful glance at Hiro, "I'm nowhere near as talented as this young lad. Or that one." He jerks his thumb at Stark. "Not to mention you, Peter. After all, you made that Spider-Man suit on your own, didn't ya? Oh, who are we kidding - of course you did."

"Yes, yes, Fitz, we know you're surrounded by equally awesome people with which you can bond," Simmons says. "But we can gush later."

"Yeah...yeah, I try," I say, nodding at Fitz.

"I guess SHIELD Academy isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?" Fitz asks with a sheepish grin. "I mean, none of you guys ever went there, and yet, here you are."

Stark turns away from the window - the whole time we've been driving, he's been looking towards the Manhattan skyline as it rises up to meet the clouds. Specifically, at the profile of Stark Tower - I can see the white Avengers symbol glowing near its top now. "You guys are sayin' I'm the Avengers' leader?" he asks.

"You are. Or were, before you got de-aged and sent through the portal," Simmons says.

Stark looks awestruck. "You've gotta be kidding. That's so awesome! So when do I get to watch my movie and get my memories back, huh?"

"Maybe later," Fitz says. "It would help if your mind was sufficiently prepared. Brains are delicate instruments to screw around with. I should know. I still haven't quite recovered from my...from my…" He snaps his fingers, grasping for the right word.

"Near-drowning?" Simmons says, turning the car past a sign for Midtown Science High School - just like in the movies.

"Yeah, that's right," Fitz says. "Thanks."

It's not long before we head down a familiar street lined with houses. Simmons stops in front of one of them, then checks the address against something written on her phone screen. "Here we are," she says. "This is where you used to live, Peter."

I get out of the car and walk up to the front door, recognizing the large pane of glass in the door with the number "36" painted on it. Another memory surfaces here - of me having a fight with my Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and then of me running out the door and slamming it with enough force to smash the glass. I guess I must have already gotten my Spider-Man powers by then.

And, based on how the first _Amazing Spider-Man_ movie went, not long after that, Uncle Ben went out to find me, got into a fight with a thief, and was accidentally shot. Like Gwen, he ended up dying in my arms.

There's another person I know who's alive and well in the life I had before today, but I remember their death anyway.

"Peter?" Simmons walks up behind me. "Are you all right?"

I shake my head - not to say no, but to loosen the nuts and bolts in my brain. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you getting another memory?" she asks.

"I said I'm fine."

"I'd listen to the man," Stark says. "Now how the hell do we get in here? Petey, you remember where the spare key is?" He starts checking under the rocks grouped around the bottom of the porch steps - one of those typical spare-key hiding places.

I grind my teeth a bit, but decide there's no point telling Stark to stop nicknaming me. "No, but by all means, keep makin' a mess of the landscaping."

"Relax, dude," Hiro says, pushing past Fitz and Simmons. "I'm on it." He puts on a headband and takes a small black box out of his pocket. When Hiro opens the box, it turns out it's actually clear, and it's the contents of the box that are black. They rise out of the box in a small cloud of what can only be flying microbots.

Hiro taps his headband, and the microbot cloud reshapes itself so it now looks like a key.

Fitz and Simmons have clearly seen this before, because they don't look as impressed as Stark and I do.

The key-shaped cloud floats up to the door. It takes a few tries, but eventually, it enters the lock and turns it, opening the door. I walk into the house and immediately start climbing the stairs, guided by either instinct or another buried memory until I reach what has to be my old room. It's got a computer on the desk like the one I have at home in San Castiel, the bedspread is almost the same. And hell, as I look on the bulletin board behind the computer, I see a photo tacked into place of me with Gwen's head resting on my chest.

So does that mean the Spider-Man suit is hiding around here somewhere?

With Stark's help, I look around the room, searching every nook and cranny. There's no sign of the Spider-Man suit, but Stark does find a box full of unused webshooters. He calls up Fitz and Simmons, who take the box down to the car.

Not long after that, I find the thing I was sent in here to find - my dad's glasses. They're exactly how I remember them - black, spidery-looking frames (haha, "spidery") that seem to be a little more flexible than most glasses. They're hiding in a leather briefcase just like in the movie.

Having found the glasses, I detour over to the bathroom and find a contact-lens case sitting on the sink. It's even filled with solution. For the first time, I wonder how long it's been since I was supposedly taken away from this world. It can't have been that long, can it? Especially since the house, while empty, doesn't look abandoned. There's still power, and there are no heavy layers of dust all over everything.

Nevertheless, I carefully remove my contacts. Behind me, I hear Stark groan in disgust. "Ugh. I hated havin' to wear those things. Thank God for laser eye surgery, am I right?"

"You used to wear contacts?" I look at Stark - he's not much more than a blur in my myopic vision.

"I sorta remember it from freshman year or so," Stark says. "'Course, now I know that I'm rememberin' shit that never happened."

"Yeah. Of course."

I put the glasses on, blinking a few times until I get used to seeing things clearly again. These were my dad's? They work very well for my eyes. And hey, they don't look half-bad on me either.

Then the memory comes in, one of the clearest ones yet. I'm in Oscorp tower, looking at Gwen - who's wearing a lab coat because she's an intern there under Dr. Curt Connors, aka the Lizard. And right there, I feel a quick, sharp pain on the back of my neck. Like I just got injected with something.

Or like something bit me.

My hand automatically flies to that spot, and I feel something writhing under my fingers. It's a spider, and a pretty big one, too.

"Ugh," Stark groans again. "Dude, are you seein' yourself right now? I mean...holy shit, man, that's not right."

I blink, and I'm brought back to the here and now. Stark flicks the light on so I can see better the thing he's talking about. There's a thin line of spider silk trailing from my finger right to that spot on the back of my neck.

"Oh my God," I breathe.

Stark leans back down the hall and calls, "Hey, guys, come on up and see this."

"What? No, no, no, Stark-"

A shiver passes up my spine as I feel tiny vibrations in the floor under my feet. At least one of the others is headed this way. The pop-culture catchphrase isn't kidding - my Spidey-senses really are tingling.

I feel Hiro's foot land loudly on the floor right behind Stark an infinitesimal fraction of a second before it happens. And I react by jumping about a mile into the air and getting my hands stuck to a flat surface. Not the wall this time, though - instead, it's the ceiling.

I look down at Stark and Hiro - my head is hanging upside down, so I can't help but chuckle at seeing them from such a weird angle. Both of them have their mouths wide open, but then Stark shuts his and starts talking. "I...yeah, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. _Show. Off._ "

"Dude, don't act like you're not impressed." I make the mistake of pulling one hand off the ceiling and making gestures while I talk. (I've always suspected I was at least part Italian because of that particular bad habit of mine.) Unfortunately, with only one hand to support myself, I can't stay crouched on the ceiling any longer, so I end up hanging awkwardly by my sticky fingertips.

At least I stick the landing when I dismount a second later. And when my dad's glasses fall off at the same time, I manage to catch them by hooking one finger around the frames.

"So now you know how to use your Spidey-senses, huh?" Hiro asks.

"I guess so, yeah." I pocket the glasses and put my contacts back on. As I'm about to leave the bathroom, though, I stop just short of running into Simmons.

"Did you remember anything?" she asks.

"I remember the spider bite," I say.

Simmons claps her hands excitedly. "Perfect! Our theory was correct, Fitz!"

"You mean the artifact theory?" Fitz asks.

"Yes, of course!" Simmons says. "Come on, we have to go meet the others. They should still be at Gwen's apartment."


	7. Uptown Funk You Up

_**CHAPTER 7: UPTOWN FUNK YOU UP**_

 *****GWEN*****

Upon reaching the apartment where I apparently lived before - the doorman recognizes me, and asks me where I've been - the first thing I want to do is make cocoa. I can't really explain it - it's just a very powerful urge.

"Maybe you should look in your room or something?" Tadashi asks. "It's all right, Gwen. I'll keep an eye on the kettle for you."

"It's never gonna boil if you do that, you know," Clint chuckles.

I sigh heavily, then move on down the hall. I can't even remember which of the closed doors leads to my room, other than the fact that my room is somewhere on the left-hand side.

"Any particular reason why you wanna make cocoa?" Skye asks as she follows me down the hall.

I try one door, but reject that room because the decorations are so obviously those of my brother Howard. So many video game posters - and they're exactly the same ones he has in San Castiel, eerily enough.

"Maybe you've got an alien parasite that thrives on cocoa?" Skye asks. She slaps the back of my head, hard.

"Ouch!"

"Dammit, it's not the tick." Skye laughs sheepishly. "Sorry, but I've been waitin' for a long time to do that reference."

"You do movie references too?" I groan. "No wonder you're so attracted to Peter. Birds of a feather flock together."

"I'm not attracted to Peter," Skye says. "That's just a character. Although I do like him and all the amazing Spider-Man stuff he's done." She chuckles at her own joke, spoiling another otherwise casual reference. "Believe me, you don't gotta worry about me tryin' to horn in on your territory."

"Peter's not my 'territory,'" I say. "I don't own him." I try another door - this one ends up being a linen closet. The third door finally leads me to my room. Just like Howard's room, mine is nearly identical in appearance to the one I know on the West Coast. The layout is different, of course, but just about every detail is something I have in my room in San Castiel.

"Of course not," Skye says, hanging out in the doorway. She lapses into awkward silence for a few seconds before finally asking, "So, are you remembering anything?"

"No," I say. "And you're not helping me concentrate here."

"Oh, sorry." Skye twiddles her thumbs as she leans against the doorjamb. "Should I leave? I'm, uh, kinda supposed to keep an eye on you. In case you get any memories back with, uh, catastrophic effects."

I glower at Skye. "If the sheer force of my recovered memories gives me a brain aneurysm, I'll be sure to scream for help."

"Oh, trust me, if you're gonna get a brain aneurysm, you want someone close by to help you out," Skye says. "Like, within touching distance."

I turn away from Skye and look out the window for a few seconds, familiarizing myself with the skyline view. "You'll probably be better off stayin' out of my personal space."

"By that, do you mean your own private bubble, or this whole room?" Skye asks, spreading her arms.

I sit in a blue armchair by the window, my head in my hands. I think about something I saw on the drive from the airport - a piece of graffiti on the side of the road bearing the familiar Spider-Man logo. They had that in the movies, and I guess in this alternate world where Spider-Man was real, they had it too.

But it wasn't the Spider-Man symbol that I really noticed. It was what was next to the symbol - a simple, if grammatically messed-up, sentence written in blue spray paint. It said, "COME BACK SPIDEY WE NEED YOU."

Sure, everything outside the window looks normal. It doesn't seem as if Spidey's absence has caused the city to devolve into a war zone or anything. But that's just what I'm seeing on the surface. Spider-Man has always been known for not only taking on Big Bad supervillains and reprehensible criminals, but also for smaller issues. Literal kid stuff.

For instance, one of my favorite scenes in _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ (one which, unfortunately, Coulson did not show us today) has Spidey stopping to save a little kid and his wind-turbine science project from the bully boys who want nothing more than to break them both. Not only does he scare away the bullies, but he also uses his webline to do some emergency rapid repair for the turbine, and then, for maximum heartwarming factor, he walks the kid home.

(Obviously, I'm not remembering this like I was there - because if the alternate version of the movie is the actual record of events, I wasn't.)

If Peter really belongs in this world as Spider-Man, I really hope he can return to it soon enough. Being a superhero must have been a big part of his life. I can't imagine he wouldn't return to that, knowing the good he does in the world.

I look up and see Skye still standing in the doorway. "Seriously, if you want me to leave, I'll leave," she says.

"No, that's okay," I say. "Um, so Peter and the others are supposed to meet us here later, right?"

"Yeah, so we can just do a quick hop over to Stark Tower from here," Skye says. "That's our next stop, in case you didn't know."

"Okay." Since Peter's house is supposed to be in Queens, I'm guessing he'll probably pass by the same graffiti I saw along the way. Hopefully, he'll see it and get the message too.

I sit in the chair a little bit longer. When I'd been talking with Peter earlier on the plane, I told him I remembered a time when he came into my room at night, all cut up from a fight. He'd made a joke about "of course you'd remember that," probably alluding to the fact that at the time, he was half-naked.

Another memory connected to that one is starting to surface. This event took place before I'd started tending to Peter's Lizard-induced slashes - at least, so I think, based on the fact that he was fully dressed at the time. I remember Peter making a "you should see the other guy" joke, then my dad calling down the hall, asking me if I wanted cocoa.

"Oh," I whisper to myself. "That explains it."

"What explains what?" Skye asks. She tilts her head and looks down the hall. "Sounds like the cocoa's ready. You wanna come and get it?"

I rise from the chair, stretch my arms, then follow Skye. "That's why I wanted cocoa," I say. "Because my dad was offering me some."

"In a memory?" Skye asks.

"Yeah." I reach the kitchen, where Tadashi is pouring mugs of cocoa for everyone. "But I didn't get a complete picture."

"Maybe if you went back there, you'll get more?" Clint asks. "Could be important."

"Could be," I agree, taking my cocoa back to my room. As I do so, I think about the strangeness of the situation. I've never been one to take food or drinks into my room - in my family, that's not even allowed.

I drink the cocoa, allowing more of the memory to filter into my brain. After Dad called me, Peter went and hid behind the very same chair in which I'm currently sitting. Meanwhile, I stuck my head out the door and told him to go away (okay, I didn't actually say that, but it amounted to the same thing.) He reminded me of my fantasy about living in a chocolate house, to which I responded that it would be impractical. And fattening. Then I turned around and saw Peter's head sticking out from behind the chair, and he was trying not to laugh at the whole "chocolate house" thing.

I even remember going back to Dad and passing my whole outburst off on a nonexistent period. I can't believe I didn't start laughing my head off at how uncomfortable he was, especially since I was lying my ass off to cover for Peter's presence behind my closed door.

I don't really know how long I spend lost in that memory. It must be a good long while, though, because the next thing I know, I'm hearing Tony's and Hiro's voices coming into the apartment, talking to Skye and Tadashi.

And then I hear a clunking noise outside my window. I turn around to see Peter crouched on the fire escape, a silly grin on his face.

"Did you really just climb twenty stories?" I ask as I open the window.

Peter's grin expands, as if to say, "Stupid question." "Yeah," he says. "Stark thinks I'm just bein' a show-off."

"I think he might be right," I laugh as Peter climbs through the window and dusts himself off. "So, did you get anything?"

"Got some of these," Peter says, showing me the inside of his wrist. He's attached a small metal disk to the cuff of his shirtsleeve, and is keeping it hidden under the sleeve of his hoodie.

"What are they?"

"Webshooters," Peter says. "I tried 'em out before leavin' my house. I made a bit of a mess, but nothing I couldn't clean up." He sniffs the air. "Is that hot chocolate?"

"It helped me unlock a memory," I say. "Remember when my dad was teasing me about the chocolate house thing?"

"Is that really your fantasy?" Peter asks. "'Cause if so, when can I join you there?"

I laugh out loud - something I try not to do all that often, because it sounds really fake and obnoxious. Unfortunately, I'm naturally a terrible laugher.

"I got an idea," Peter says, pulling his jacket sleeve back over his webshooter again. "I think I can unlock another memory of yours. Hell, I'd be surprised if it's not already unlocked, you know what I mean?"

I'm a bit unnerved by the gleam in his eye, but I go along with his plan anyway. Peter leads me out of my room and onto the balcony just outside the apartment's back door.

"So, uh, what are we doin' out here?" I ask, glancing back at the door in case anyone's followed us. I'm sure Skye and/or Tadashi will be coming through that door any moment.

"I think it's better if I show you," Peter says, standing about five feet to my right. "Turn around."

"Why?" I ask, my suspicions raised.

"I promise, it's nothing nasty," Peter says.

I give him a sideways smile, then turn around. A second later, something small and sticky hits me in the small of my back, then I'm pulled towards Peter. In a lightning-fast movement, he's got me in his arms.

Even before Peter points it out, I remember exactly what he's emulating. Our first kiss - which was also the moment where he confessed to me that he was Spider-Man. Not in words - he just couldn't spit it out - but with the webline to my back.

When he repeats that kiss as well, it feels like I'm experiencing it twice in the same moment. Although the first time, we both had fish breath - I'm also remembering that I'd invited him over for dinner, and Mom had made branzino. This time, I have cocoa breath, which I'm sure Peter enjoys a lot more.

Peter breaks off the kiss a little sooner than I would have liked, but he makes up for it by gazing into my eyes. "I love you," he says. "So much."

I blink back tears as I see his own eyes starting to water. "Me too."

Sadly, this is when our sweet moment is shattered by someone's cell phone ringing loudly behind the door. Peter and I stomp over there and find Tadashi fumbling with his phone's screen while Tony tries not to laugh at his clumsiness.

"Is that 'Uptown Funk?'" Peter asks, pointing to Tadashi's phone. "In Japanese?"

Tadashi nods. "Yep. A friend of mine karaoked it, and sent the recording out to everyone she knew. I liked it so much I decided to use it as my ringtone." He finally answers his phone, but then hangs up a couple seconds later.

"Missed call?" I ask.

"No, it wasn't a call," Tadashi says. "It's just time for us to head to Stark Tower now."

Tony nods approvingly. "Finally. Now I can get the Iron Man suit on. If it fits me, of course. I think my body's still got some filling out to do before I finally become a man." He snickers under his breath. "Hey, could you play that song again, dude? I wanted to see if I could understand it."

Tadashi's face brightens. "Oh. _Anata ga nihongo o hanasu?_ "

Peter and I exchange confused glances while Tony responds in Japanese: " _Hai. Jakkan._ "

" _Dono kurai anata wa sore o benkyō shite iru?_ " Tadashi asks.

Tony then breaks into a fit of embarrassed laughter. "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you just said. Then again, I've only been takin' Japanese for a couple months now."

"Then you just answered my question," Tadashi says. "I asked how long you've been studying it." He smacks his forehead. "So you've been in that class for a couple months already and you don't even know that phrase? Unbelievable."

"Hey, you were talkin' way too fast there," Tony says. "I didn't even know that's what you said till after you pointed it out."

He looks at Peter, who holds up his hands. "Don't look at me," he says. "I don't speak a word of Japanese."

"I know," Tony says. "But what foreign language do you take? Didn't it seem hella fast at first for you too?"

"Of course it did," Peter says. "It's French. French always sounds hella fast."

Tadashi frowns as he leads us back to the apartment. "Are you guys sure you're not from San Fransokyo? 'Cause the way you say 'hella' all the time...I doubt you'd have said it before you were taken from here."

"What do you mean?" Peter asks. "I've always said that."

"He does have a point," I say. "I've always heard it was strictly a San Fransokyo thing. Or, I guess in this universe, we'd say-"

"San Francisco," Tadashi says. "That was the original name of our city too, but in our world - not this one - the Japanese helped rebuild it after the 1906 earthquake, so they renamed it to reflect the Japanese aesthetic the new city had."

"Yeah, we've heard that story before," says Peter. "In whatever fake memory implants of fourth-grade California history class we've all been given."

I nod along with Peter. "Yeah, except I'm starting to lose my memory of that. I don't remember any fourth-grade California history class."

"Maybe that's your memory implants losing the fight with the real memories?" Tony suggests.

Tadashi nods thoughtfully, then opens the door and takes us back into the apartment. "Good theory, Tony. All right, everyone," he says to the room at large, clapping his hands for attention. "Are we ready to go to Stark Tower?"

A rousing chorus of "Yes!" rings through the room. Tadashi and I spare a minute to wash out every mug that was used for cocoa, then we all head out. Peter insists on taking the fire escape - not to show off this time, but because he didn't want to arouse the doorman's suspicions by having one more person leave the building than there had been coming in.

It's not long until we get to Stark Tower and park in the underground garage at the base of the building. Skye is able to flash her SHIELD badge at the entrance, and that's clearly good enough for our entire party. The second SUV doesn't even get stopped.

"Hey," Tony says as we wait for the elevator to arrive. "Am I the only one who noticed the light on the tower change?"

"It changed?" Skye asks. Her eyes dart over to the garage entrance, as if deciding whether or not she should make the run over there just to look outside.

"Yeah," Tony says. "It went red. That's a bad sign, I take it? A red alert or something?"

"It means we're gonna want you in the Iron Man suit ASAP," Skye says.

"Tell me I'm at least gonna get some kind of training first," Tony says, even though we all know what the answer will be.

Skye shakes her head. "Muscle memory, dude."

Peter pulls a webshooter out of his jacket pocket, then puts it back. I can hear a faint clinking, suggesting that he's got a pile of them where that came from. "Whatever's gonna come after us," he says, "I'll be ready. I think."

"Don't think, just feel," says Hiro, putting on a headband. He'd explained about his neural-cranial transmitter and microbots on the drive from the apartment.

"Now I'm startin' to feel useless," I groan. "I don't have any cool weapons."

"Oh, that's right," Simmons says. "We almost forgot. Fitz, the Night-Night Gun?"

"I thought we weren't usin' that name anymore," says Fitz as he hands me one of the modified pistols.

"I like it," I say, tucking the gun in the waistband of my skirt. Now I'm starting to feel like a badass. "It's a ridiculously cute nickname for an efficient weapon."

Simmons nods approvingly. "There's something to be said for dichotomy, is there not?"

The elevator opens, and I join Skye, Tony, Peter, and Hiro. Skye hits the top-floor button, but it does nothing to make the elevator move. "Oh, right, I forgot," she says. "It needs your thumbprint, Mr. Stark."

Tony presses his thumb to the button, and the elevator responds by going up. " _Welcome back, Mr. Stark,_ " says a smooth, English-accented male voice. " _May I ask what beauty regimen you've taken up? You look twenty years younger, sir._ "

Tony looks around at all of us, but doesn't respond to the electronic voice's question. This leads to a long and awkward silence, even throughout the relatively short elevator ride.

But then, as soon as we arrive at the top floor, we're greeted by the biggest surprise so far today. A tall man in a red-and-blue outfit - not unlike that of Spider-Man, but with eyeholes instead of mirrored lenses - is waiting, a big automatic-looking gun pointed right in our faces.

"Deadpool?" Skye asks incredulously. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What do you think? Startin' the ball rollin' on the next level of this silly story plot," Deadpool laughs. We've been told he was insane, but his laughter doesn't sound as maniacal as your usual garden-variety Renfield-type. "Step into my office - oh, wait. No, it's your office," he says, casually poking his gun into Tony's face. "You just don't know it yet."

Skye levels her Night-Night Gun in Deadpool's face. "Give me one good reason not to ice your ass right here."

"The writer won't let you," Deadpool says, pointing somewhere vaguely overhead. "Sure, that skinny-ass geek's got a crush on you, but that doesn't mean he'll let you do whatever the hell you want."

"I'm serious," Skye says, cocking the gun. "Why are you here? No more games."

Deadpool lets his eyes rove over Skye's body - and mine as well. "Yo, perv," I say, snapping my fingers in his face. "Eyes up here if you wanna talk to me."

"Right," Deadpool drawls. "Lemme see if I got all your names right. Skye, I remember you. Gwen Stacy, of course. You're a real pretty one."

I don't know which disturbs me more - the fact that this cuckoo knows my name, or the fact that he's continuing to check me out. "You do realize I'm only seventeen, right?"

"Yeah, so what? I was seventeen once too." Deadpool looks at Peter. "Peter Parker. You know, I was told you were a total nerd. I guess the definition of 'nerd' changed sometime in the last twelve years. Seriously, any girl you wanted, you could get into her pants." Peter gapes at him, clearly shocked by his frankness. "Or guy, if that's how you roll. Not that I'm gonna judge."

Now it's Tony's turn. "So you're the famous Iron Man," Deadpool says. "Or are you? I mean, I know the writer says you are, but you're not even a man yet. Hell, has anyone ever told you, you look exactly like that kid from _The Internship?_ Great movie. Great, great movie. Very hilarious."

And finally, he reaches Hiro. "And you. A prodigious young man, a genius in the robotics field. But you've got a tragic backstory of your own. One that, like everyone else in the room - excluding your not-really-sister, of course" - he nods at Skye - "you've managed to forget."

Outside, sirens start to wail. "And that's my cue," Deadpool says. "The Dark Elves are coming, and I gotta keep you guys safe. So you should probably get behind me. Oh, and Stark? You can send me the repair bill, but don't expect me to pay it."

Deadpool goes outside onto the balcony, then leans over the edge of the building and starts shooting at something below.

"Guys?" Stark says. "Is this what we're here for?"

I turn to see what he's talking about. Standing in a niche behind a big office desk - with Tony's name engraved on the nameplate - is the distinctive red-and-gold Iron Man suit.

Not only that, but to its right is a stars-and-stripes-colored suit and disk-shaped metal shield - Captain America's uniform. And between these is the distinctive red-and-blue spandex Spidey-suit.


	8. Danger Signs Flashing In My Brain

_**CHAPTER 8: DANGER SIGNS FLASHING IN MY BRAIN**_

 *****GWEN*****

"Um...okay," Tony says, poking the Iron Man suit. "Are you sayin' I'm supposed to put this thing on? Like, right here, right now?"

Deadpool pauses in the process of firing his gun on the Dark Elves - or whatever he's really shooting at. We can't see what he claims to see, because none of us are anywhere near the balcony. "You gotta do it, dude," he calls out. "The writer says so."

"What writer?" I ask.

"You're really gonna humor him?" Skye whispers.

"Why not?" I say. "It'll give me something to do other than watch Tony struggle with that robo-suit."

Sure enough, Tony's already started trying to put the suit on, and he really has no idea what he's doing. "I think this was designed for a smaller guy," he grumbles, trying to stuff his arm into one of the suit's arms.

"I don't think so," Skye says. "You could say the same for the Spider-Man suit here. I mean, look at it. Who here thinks Peter could actually fit in that thing?"

"Excuse me? You tryin' to call me fat, Skye?" Peter crosses his arms.

"No, 'cause that would be absurd," Skye says. "Nothing could be further from…"

I tune out her voice as I approach Deadpool, against my better judgment. Call me crazy, but I think the crazy guy seems to know the most about what's going on here.

"Oh, now you wanna see the Dark Elves for yourself?" Deadpool asks. "Come here. Just lean over the edge and you'll see 'em. They're pretty good climbers, the little buggers." He takes another shot, and I can hear a pig-like squeal of pain as the bullet reaches its target.

I look down the side of the building and see no less than half a dozen Dark Elves, just as ugly and nasty as the ones I saw in San Fransokyo, scaling the smooth glass walls. "Are your shots even doing anything?" I ask.

"Besides slowin' 'em down? Nah." Deadpool shoots the nearest Elf, then steps back and switches out clips on his gun with casual slowness. "The writer says I'm just here to distract this scum before our boy Stark goes all medieval on their asses."

"There you go with that 'writer' stuff again," I say. I'm distracted for a moment by a loud clunk from the office - Tony's successfully gotten both his arms into the Iron Man suit, and now he's trying to work on doing the same with his legs. Unfortunately, now he can't even lift his arms up. No surprise there - he's a really skinny guy, all pale skin and fragile bones. I don't want to say being a rich boy will do that to you, but there's really no other quick and dirty explanation I can think of.

"Like you care about the writer," Deadpool says, slotting a new clip into place at last. "You think I'm insane, so you don't believe a word I say." It's not a question. "I'm what you'd call an unreliable narrator. Except I'm tellin' the truth, so it's basically up to you to decide whether or not you can trust me."

"And I decide not to trust you."

"Good call, baby." Deadpool cocks his gun and returns to the edge of the balcony to start shooting again. "'Cause I actually am insane, and in the immortal words of Loverboy, 'lovin' every minute of it.'" He pauses. "Yeah, it's Loverboy. I kept thinkin' it was Aerosmith, but the writer says it's really Loverboy."

"And that's exactly why I'm not gonna trust you," I say, glaring at him. "Because you're still gonna flirt with me, knowin' full well I'm underage and under-interested. That's not just insane. That's really, truly sick."

"Then why are you still hangin' around with me?" Deadpool asks. "'Cause the writer wants you to, that's why. He wants someone to interact with me so I'm not just lookin' like a fool, shootin' up Dark Elves for no apparent reason other than the fact that they're Always Chaotic Evil. Huh - he just realized the initials of those words spell 'ACE.'"

"You mean, you just realized that." Behind us, a loud noise alerts me to Tony tripping on his own feet after getting them into the suit. The floor in that office must be specially reinforced with steel or something, otherwise he'd probably have fallen through several stories' worth of drywall by now.

"No, the writer realized that," Deadpool corrects me after taking another potshot. "Ah well. Haters gonna hate, potatoes gonna potate. And the reason why he's puttin' you with me...well, obviously Stark's tryin' on the suit for what seems like the first time. Skye is there to help him out with that, so she's not available. I'd probably get along with Peter pretty well, but he's got this feeling in the back of his mind that I'm not to be trusted. It's probably 'cause he vaguely remembers a time when he was Spider-Man, workin' with me to take down Doc Ock, and I nearly let him die. Not my fault he was bein' all kamikaze suicide-run, just rarin' for that mechanical creep to do a little slicey-slice on his guts."

I laugh out loud upon hearing this, thinking it must be a really bad joke. "Peter, getting suicidal? I don't think so."

"You'd be surprised," Deadpool says. "Losin' the only non-family member you've ever loved can do things to you. Not that I'm speakin' from experience here - I've never been in love myself."

"And...wait a minute. Wasn't Doc Ock in some other Spider-Man movie? Not in the Amazing Spider-Man series."

"He shows up in the _Amazing Spider-Man_ 'verse too," Deadpool says, shooting another Elf right in the skull. This time, it's so surprised that it actually loses its grip on the building and falls about two hundred feet before finally grabbing hold of a window it already broke on the way up. "That movie just hasn't been released yet. The company that makes the movies, they've had a bit of trouble lately. _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ wasn't the big hit at the box office everyone thought it would be - the writer's especially pissed about that, 'cause he's one of those guys who, even though he sees flaws in the movie, thinks they only make the movie better. Hell, considering everyone clapped at the end when he saw it in theaters-"

"Get to the point," I grumble.

"Hold your mother-huggin' horses, honey. I haven't even gotten to the part where the North Koreans hacked the studio all 'cause of a dumb comedy about an assassination plot-"

"You're bullshittin' me here, aren't you?" I ask, shaking my head. "North Korea, one of the most dirt-poor countries in the world, hack a major movie studio? That's about as likely as Tony gettin' into that Iron Man suit."

"What about me and the Iron Man suit?" Tony asks, his voice amplified. I turn around to see him clunking up to me, fully sealed in the robo-suit.

Deadpool looks up from his shooting and blinks at me through his eyeholes. "You were saying?"

"You know I was bein' sarcastic, right?"

"Of course you were," Deadpool says. "You knew he'd get into the suit. Of course," he laughs, "whether or not he can use it properly is another story. I mean, there's only so much muscle memory can do."

"Don't worry," says Tony. Even the suit waves its hand lazily to emphasize his words. "I got this." He spreads his arms, palms down, then fires off a two-second burst of energy, allowing the suit to hover in the air for exactly that long before it comes crashing down again. The suit, with Tony inside, falls flat on its ass, then rubs its head. "Ow."

"Let's try that again," Skye says, clapping her hands. "Remember, Tony, there's only…" She looks over the edge, with Deadpool kindly stepping out of her way and waiting until she's gone before resuming his shooting. "Five Dark Elves climbin' your tower."

"Yeah," Peter says, patting the suit on the shoulder. "No pressure."

The suit tilts its head. I guess that's the closest it can come to approximating an eye-roll. "I get the feeling none of you have any confidence in me," Tony says. The suit's mask retracts, revealing his face. It looks to me like he's trying not to show any fear. But his eyes are looking a bit twitchy. He can't stop glancing off to the side for split seconds at a time.

"Seriously," Peter says, kneeling down to Tony's level. "You can do this. I was able to figure out how to do my superhero thing. Why not you?"

"Your superhero thing is all parkour-type shit, though," Tony says. "I'm not exactly equipped to do my own stunts here."

"So?" I decide to contribute to Peter's pep talk. "You're gonna need to learn this again anyway. Come on, get up. Get up and show us all what you're made of."

"And if you start to fall," Hiro says, putting on his neural-cranial transmitter, "I'll send my microbots to pick you up again."

Peter holds out his hand, as if to help Tony get up again, but he shakes his head. "I can do it myself, thanks." He awkwardly leverages himself into a standing position, then teeters on the spot for a second before walking to the edge of the balcony. "Hey, wait a minute," he says, glancing down at the circle of light shining on his chest. "If I'm really supposed to be Iron Man...then doesn't that mean I'm supposed to have some kind of magnet inside me?"

Deadpool takes one last shot, then steps away from the edge and moves back inside. "It's cleverly hidden, but it's there," he says. "A miniature arc-reactor that he who de-aged you put in you. Haven't you wondered why you haven't had an asthma attack in all your time in San Fransokyo?"

"How'd you know I have asthma?" Tony asks.

"Come on, kid. You're a techno-geek. It's a Sherlockian guess." Deadpool and Tony stare at each other for a moment. "All right, I give. The writer told me. You wanna find out more, take it up with him whenever he gets into your head. Deadpool, out!" He turns around, flashes a reverse peace sign, then crosses through the office doors - thankfully, without another word.

Tony looks down at the Dark Elves again, then puts the mask back on. "Stand back, people," he says. "This could get messy." He spreads his arms and tips forward over the edge.

Peter, Hiro, Skye, and I run forward to watch Tony's progress. His arms and legs flail around as he tries to get his bearings and figure out how to work the suit properly. Meanwhile, the Dark Elves continue to climb - they're now less than twenty feet away from us.

Halfway to the ground, Tony finally fires off the jet repulsors in the suit's hands and feet. He hovers in the air for a couple of seconds, then moves up and down, side to side, and diagonally in three dimensions. We can hear him laughing and swearing in his excitement as he whoops it up down there.

Then a pair of what look like miniature rocket launchers rise out of the suit's shoulders. "Hey assbutts! Suck on these!" Tony yells a second before the launchers fire their payload on the Elves. Each one gets hit by two small but powerful RPGs. Most of them impact on their legs or shoulders, but at least one takes it right in the left butt cheek. (Do Dark Elves even have butt cheeks? I guess they do, since they have a mostly humanoid anatomy and all.)

Either way, the explosives aren't lethal, but they're enough to make the Dark Elves let go of the building to a man - or Elf, I guess. They all fall to the ground, crushing a parked car or four in the process. And still, they don't die. Most of them clearly have broken backs or necks, but all they need to do is reach up and click their heads back into place. Yes, we can actually hear the clicks up here.

"That's gross," I say.

"I know, right?" Peter says. "There should be a law against that."

Luckily, the Dark Elves don't seem to be in a fight-to-the-death kind of mood today. As soon as they've picked themselves up and dusted the broken glass off their tunics (or whatever the hell those things they're wearing are called), they turn tail and leave.

Tony rises up to meet us. His suit seems to know where it's going - it lands on a curved walkway, and from there, a series of machines start picking off the suit in pieces as he walks. I bet he usually walked normally through this device, however - it's not designed to compensate for a Tony who's jumping all over the place, vibrating with excitement like he's never been in the Iron Man suit before. Which, for all intents and purposes, he hasn't. The machine parts keep whacking him in the face, chest, etc. as they try to remove the suit.

"You guys all saw that, right?" Tony calls over to us while we walk up to him. "Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews! I need to do this every damn day!"

"As soon as we get back to San Fransokyo," Skye says. "We'll pick up another one of our Avenger friends, then take you all back to our super-top-secret SHIELD base where you can train in the suits as much as you like...for a couple of days, anyway."

"Why just a couple of days?" Tony asks, pouting at Skye like he's already having his new toy taken away.

"'Cause...well, who knows what could happen by then?" Skye opens the office door, and we can see the Iron Man suit once again standing behind the desk. "Guys, I'll need you all to help me carry this thing downstairs," she says. "Same with the Captain America suit. Peter, I think you can handle the Spidey-suit on your own."

"Right," Peter says. He takes the suit down and slings it over his shoulder, then picks up the legs of the Iron Man suit. Skye and Tony take an arm each, while I carry Captain America's armor. The shield proves too heavy for any of us to lift ourselves, so Hiro uses his microbots to carry that one.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," I say, "but which one of our friends is supposed to be Cap?"

Skye grins, recognizing his nickname. "Thanks for reminding me," she says. "Tony, you have Steve's number, right?"

"Not Steve Rogers?" Peter asks, stifling a chuckle.

"Why? You already guessed it was him?" Skye asks.

"No," Peter says. "But that's kinda...sorta...well, it's an in-joke, so you probably wouldn't get it. But Barton and I...in our journalism class, we call him 'Captain Awesome.'"

Skye nods approvingly as we get into the elevator. "Also an accurate description. Tony, his number?"

Tony gives Skye the number, and she lowers the upper half of the Iron Man suit while she dials it. Then she hands her phone off to Tony. "You can probably sweet-talk him better than I can," she says. "You know him best out of all of us."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Sweet-talk? You're not seri-hey, Rogers!" The abrupt shift in his tone of voice is actually pretty unnerving. "What's up? Hang on, I'll put you on speaker." He holds the phone out, then thumbs the screen a couple of times. "All right, you're on. Hey, guess who else is here with me? Parker, Gwen Stacy, Barton, the Hamadas...yep, everyone and their mother."

" _Well, where the hell are you?_ " Steve asks. " _Haven't you seen the news? There's been an attack in the city...and I heard something went wrong with your science fair project, but nobody really knows what happened. I swear, I think I took a wrong turn somewhere and stepped into a comic-book movie._ "

Tony laughs out loud. "Yeah, funny story about that...but it'll take too long to explain. I got a question for you - how would you love to discover your inner superhero?"

" _What are you talkin' about? Seriously, Stark, what's goin' on?_ "

"Rogers, you're not gonna believe us if we tell you," Peter says.

"You should see it for yourself," I say.

" _Parker? Gwen? Is that you?_ "

I exchange glances with Peter. Why is it that guys at Augustine always call each other by their last names? I've never understood that.

"Just get over to the parking garage at Maguire Mall by…" Tony checks his watch, which is still set to Pacific time. "Seven o'clock. We'll all be there, and we're gonna show you what's up. It's gonna be a wild ride, too. Trust me on that."

" _Anything else you can tell me?_ " Steve asks. " _Like where are the hidden cameras?_ "

"Would I really lie to you, buddy?" Tony asks. "Maguire Mall, seven o'clock. Be there or be square. Yeah, I said that. You can shoot me later tonight. See you then!" He hangs up and returns the phone to Skye, then together they pick up the Iron Man arms again as the elevator drops us off in the basement.

"You think he'll be there, or be square?" Skye asks with a raised eyebrow.

"You just concentrate on gettin' us to San Cas in record time, my dear," Tony says with a rakish grin and - I can't believe I'm saying this, but there's really no other way to describe this - bedroom eyes. "Steve'll be there. He's always up for a little adventure. And, if worst comes to worst, we can always kidnap him."

"You're kidding, right?" I stare at Tony, horror-struck.

"Of course," Tony says, fixing his grin on me now. "That's the last of last resorts." He helps Skye and me load the Iron Man suit into the back of one of the SUVs - Simmons having opened it from the inside - then does one last jump into the air and a cry of "WHOO HOO!" before climbing into the backseat.


	9. There's A Maniac Out In Front Of Me

_**CHAPTER 9: THERE'S A MANIAC OUT IN FRONT OF ME**_

 *****PETER*****

It's going to be a quick hop back to San Castiel, if the impossibly short travel time to New York is any indication. While we're in the air, I lock myself in the bathroom while I put the Spider-Man suit on for the first time. Well, not really the first time, since I remember wearing it before. But it'll be the first time since I started my new life. It's funny how I still don't have any memories of having even left - unless those were wiped too cleanly to recover. Or maybe the movies just can't help me recover everything I've lost.

But even knowing that I've worn the suit before doesn't adequately prepare me for one thing - it's not at all comfortable. Hell, before I put it on, it looked so small that I didn't even think I'd be able to fit my arms or legs (or any other part of me, really) into it. Then again, in the movies, it's kind of implied that Spider-Man...no, strike that - that I wear the suit under my regular clothes all the time when I'm out in public. Which I guess makes sense - who knows when I might need to spring into action? Still, though, to think I'd go around wearing that tight spandex all the time...I feel like it's trying to crush my balls into oblivion, among other attacks on my circulation. And then there's the mask. It's made of the same material, which doesn't breathe all that well. So how do I expect to breathe myself when I wear it?

I'd take a deep breath before putting the mask on, but I can't really inflate my chest too much with the suit over it. So I just take the deepest breath I can, then cover my face with the mask. I blink a few times, getting used to the slight haze caused by the white lenses. But then I can see things a bit more clearly, like what I normally see with just my contacts.

I turn to look at my reflection in the mirror. It's so weird, knowing that I'm blinking but not being able to see it behind the mask. It makes me look non-expressive. Although I can sort of see the mask's synthetic fabric bulge slightly when I raise my eyebrow. I guess that'll have to do.

I take off the mask so I can get a better look at the rest of the uniform. I have to admit, even though it chafes a lot, the uniform means well in the way it hugs my body. It's so aerodynamic. I actually based it on the uniforms worn by bike racers and the guys who do the luge, if I remember correctly. And besides, it does a much better job of showing how lean and fit I am than my street clothes do. Even though I do have a tendency to go for tighter-fitting clothes for exactly that reason, they're still not quite as show-off-y. (Yeah, Stark, you're right. I am a show-off. Takes one to know one, though.)

Speaking of street clothes, I put these on again over the uniform. I consider removing the top of the uniform first, because I'm wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt right now. But then I remember that before we left New York, Coulson said something about me, Gwen, Barton, and Stark picking up our bags at SFO when we arrived. Hopefully I'll have at least one long-sleeve shirt in there. Even though it's the middle of spring, and the weather's getting warmer.

For now, though, I have my jacket with which to cover the sleeves of the uniform. So I decide to keep the arms and legs on, shedding the shoes and gloves. All my regular clothes manage to cover the uniform nicely, with one exception - my boxers. The one thing I don't think I'll ever get used to is the fact that the uniform is now my underwear, because I can't wear anything under it for obvious reasons. I try to get around the problem by just slipping my boxers on over the uniform like I would my pants, but for some reason my fly won't close all the way when I do. In the end, I just forego the boxers, rolling them up and sticking them in my jacket pocket. The mask and gloves go in my other pocket, but there's really no other place for the hightop-like uniform shoes. So I just drape them over my shoulders, but then decide to carry them in my hands instead. It'll look a bit less foolish that way, I think.

Before I leave, I roll up the sleeve of my jacket enough to see the red and blue uniform underneath. In a way, it actually is, surprisingly, sort of cool now that I think about it, the whole uniform-as-underwear thing. Think about it - when you were a little kid, didn't you used to wear tighty-whities with, say, Batman or Wolverine on them? (Or panties, if you're a girl. In which case, you'd probably have had Wonder Woman. Not too many major super-heroines in Marvel, I'm afraid.) I know I did. (The tighty-whities, I mean. I've never been a girl, always a dude.) It's not exactly the same basic principle - because now, I'm an actual superhero, not just a little boy dreaming of being one - but you get the idea, right?

Oh, crap. Why am I talking as if there's some reader actually listening to my thoughts? God, I'm starting to sound like that Deadpool guy. Next thing I know, I'm gonna be telling people what the so-called "writer" who's supposedly writing this "story" is thinking, saying, doing. And then I'll be an unabashed pervert too, checking out even underage people with reckless abandon. (Believe it or not, Gwen and Skye weren't the only victims of this. I saw Deadpool sizing my ass up too.)

Okay. All thoughts of Deadpool are to be banished from my head in three, two, one...now. Everything normal - or as normal as everything can get after my life's gone all topsy-turvy.

When I leave the bathroom and rejoin the rest of the group, I can't help but walk a little funny. It reminds me of the time I saw Benedict Cumberbatch doing his version of the Beyoncé walk, except Cumberbatch made it look cool, while I don't. (Incidentally, am I the only one who doesn't like Beyoncé?)

"You're not gonna rock that super-suit for us?" Hiro asks when I reach the media room. There's no movies or TV shows playing, but instead there's music filling the room. "Love Runs Out," by OneRepublic. It's one of those pop-rock songs (or "white zone," as they would say in _Red Rain_ ) I really can't get enough of.

"I prefer to go incognito," I laugh, taking a seat between Gwen and Barton and reaching for a plate of cookies. Chocolate chip with peanut butter. I take a bite and am overwhelmed by sweet taste-bud ecstasy. "Holy God, who made these?" I ask with my mouth full. "This cookie is so good. This beats all other cookies!"

"I made it, actually," says Honey, who's coming in with another plate of the same cookies. "By the way, that's not peanut butter in there. It's actually cashew butter. Expensive, but it tastes magical. These ones, however" - she switches the new plate with the old one - "have almond butter instead. Also magical, just in a different way."

"Honey knows her sweets," Tadashi says fondly, patting Honey on the hand as he walks by her. "It's even in her name."

"Is that your actual name?" Stark asks. "Honey Lemon?"

"No," Honey giggles. "Hee hee. My real name is Stephanie Dulce."

"'Dulce' - that's Spanish for 'sweet,'" Gwen whispers to me.

"I think I already knew that," I whisper back.

"What are you whispering?" Honey asks, looking down at us with a suspicious eye. "Don't talk Greek to me! What'd you say about my mom?"

"What?" I ask, unsure what the heck Honey's getting at.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says. "I always love to find a chance to use that line. Did you ever see _Demyx Time?_ "

"Demyx - like _Kingdom Hearts?_ " Gwen asks. "My brothers love that game to death."

"I used to play it all the time when I was a kid," Honey says. "When I discovered _Demyx Time_ on YouTube, it brought back some good memories. Even though it was more about the funny stuff than about tryin' to actually be like the game, but whatever."

"Right, right," I say. I try one of the almond cookies. It's also very delicious, but I like the cashew butter ones better.

"Where are you gettin' the special nut butters, by the way?" Stark asks, staring intently at the plate but not taking any of them.

"Whole Foods, of course," Honey says. "Workin' for SHIELD, I finally get enough money to afford it!"

Stark finally chooses a cookie and chews on it thoughtfully. "Hmm. Nice. But if you really want some good almond butter, go on down to Hayashi Hills and stop at Gallagher Deli once in a while. Also, try the coffee place up the road from there - Frank's. They make a mean espresso."

"You're not tryin' to get me to maybe check out your place too, are you?" Honey asks, raising her eyebrows at Stark.

"At least you're not as obnoxious as Deadpool," Skye notes.

"Or as creepy," Stark says, shuddering. "I kept wantin' to tell the dude to stop lookin' at me funny. I'm not into older men, thank you very much."

"Neither am I," says Gwen.

"Nor me," says Skye.

"Yeah, 'cause you've only got eyes for me, don't you?" I say with a raised eyebrow.

Skye rolls her eyes. "I've told you, Peter. That was just a character. I've had a lot of 'em over the years. It's one of the few perks of bein' a foster kid - I had to reinvent myself so many times when I was a kid, it just became second nature to me."

"Foster kid?" Barton asks. "So you're not really Hiro and Tadashi's-"

"Nope," Skye says. "I'm not even half-Japanese. I'm half-Chinese, actually."

I look from Hiro to Tadashi, and then to Skye. Now that I see it, Skye really does look different from the Hamada brothers. She's got lighter hair, for instance - dark brown instead of black. I think I always assumed Hiro and Tadashi took more after their dad, while Skye looked more like their mom.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear the sound of the wheels on the Bus going round and round, all down the runway at SFO. Other than that, though, there's no sign of us coming in to land.

"Okay," Coulson says, coming into the media room. "Peter, Gwen, Clint, Tony - we'll be getting your luggage loaded onto the Bus. Meanwhile, you guys can take Skye and Hiro to meet with Steve."

"Right," Stark says, grabbing another cookie and scarfing it down.

We head downstairs to the loading bay. Before getting into the SUV, I stop to find my duffel bag among the four that are being brought in by a short-haired man, who introduces himself (with a strong English accent) as Lance Hunter. And he expresses very little surprise at seeing my age - "though, to be fair," he says, "it's not really accurate to call you 'Spider-Man' when you're not even legal, eh?"

"True, but I didn't exactly come up with it myself."

"Got me there."

"There's a lot of Brits workin' here, huh?" I ask, opening my bag and sticking my rolled-up boxers into it as unobtrusively as possible.

"Welcome to SHIELD, mate," Hunter says, taking my bag back and lifting it up with one hand while taking Stark's in the other. "It's not entirely a Yank organization. Even with that bloody eagle everywhere and all that."

"Cool."

"Oi, Spidey!" Just as I turn to leave, Hunter calls me back. "Could I get an autograph?"

I look askance at Hunter. "I didn't know I gave autographs."

"You don't," Hunter says. "Unlike all the other superheroes, you still got a secret identity. 'Cept right now, you're not so secret anymore."

"Good point. So, uh, how about it, then?"

"Yeah, I got a pen and paper here." Hunter takes some out of his pocket. The pen has no cap, and the paper is nothing but a scrap. But I'm still able to wrangle out a decent signature anyway - for "Spider-Man," not "Peter Parker."

"Thanks, mate," Hunter says, flashing me a thumbs-up. "Yeah, we're all fanboys 'round here. But 'cause you're the only one with a secret identity, yours is the most sought-after. I'll see you 'round, then?"

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say."

"Right," Hunter says, shaking my hand. "Oi, Skye! I got the autograph, so you owe me twenty now!" He laughs his head off as he carries my and Stark's bags upstairs.

After getting into the SUV, I see Skye roll her eyes before starting the engine. "Crap," she says. "I really have gotta stop makin' bets with Hunter. You know he's so British, he makes all his bets in pounds? It means I gotta shell out more money, 'cause pounds are worth more."

"Twenty pounds…" Hiro runs it through a converter app on his phone. "That's thirty bucks."

"He can put it on my tab, then," Skye grumbles. "So, Tony, where are we doin' the meeting again?"

"Maguire Mall parking garage," Stark says.

"Which one?" I ask. "There's three of 'em. There's the one for the BART station, the one for the theater-"

"The one by the Target," Stark says. "Which also connects to the theater, by the way. And while we're on the subject, who thought it was a good idea to build a movie theater on top of a parking garage? I dunno about you, but even with good seismic retrofitting, it sounds like a disaster waitin' to happen."

"Which it'll only be if I have something to say about it," Skye says with a dark chuckle.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asks Barton.

"That would be telling," Skye laughs, tapping the rearview mirror with a single finger.

Three minutes later, Skye pulls the SUV into a parking space near the theater. We sit and wait until a dark blue Mustang appears next to us, a Grouplove song playing loudly on the speakers. Everyone at Augustine recognizes that car - it's Steve Rogers' ride.

Rogers himself steps out of the driver's seat, tossing his scarf over his shoulder. He's really wearing a scarf right now? It's not that cold. Then again, Rogers does have a bit of a metrosexual streak. He jams his hands in his pockets, then leans against the side of his car, his arms crossed.

Stark is the first one out of the SUV, followed by me and Barton. "Hey, Rogers," he says. "How's it hangin', dude?"

Rogers jumps about half a mile into the air. "Holy crap, Stark, you scared me!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to," Stark says, spreading his hands. "Well, how else would I say hi? Like, 'hey, dude, I got some awesome news for you - you're Captain America!'"

Rogers looks from Stark to me. "And you brought the journalism guys to get this little practical joke on record, huh? Is that it?"

Gwen steps in front of me. "Steve, this isn't a joke," she says. "Believe me, this is all real. We're all Marvel movie characters, all of us."

"No, we're not," Rogers scoffs. "You wanna see Marvel characters? Theater's over there. We'll see the Age of Ultron cutout in the lobby."

"Hang on...did you say Age of Ultron?" Stark asks.

"Yeah...why?"

Stark fumbles in his pockets, then grabs his phone. "Look, look. Here, my science project. Someone in the audience had to have filmed my demo...and whoop-de-doo, here it is." He has Rogers look at the YouTube video playing on his phone.

"So, you called your special program Ultron too," Rogers says, returning the phone to Stark. "So what?"

"This is something I've been workin' on for a very long time," says Stark. "Even before Age of Ultron became a thing."

I raise my eyebrows behind Stark's back. Obviously, by now he knows he hasn't really been creating his Ultron program for that long. I guess he's just embellishing on things to sell it better to Rogers.

" _It's true,_ " says a familiar deep voice. " _According to my records, my 1.0 version was first activated January 5, 2011, at 3:46pm Pacific Standard time. A full sixteen months before even the first_ Avengers _movie hit theaters._ "

"Ultron?" Stark looks at his phone with surprise. I look over his shoulder and see a display on the screen exactly like the one that had been on his computer at the science fair - a wavy line for Ultron's speech, and a small square in the corner showing Stark's face as he looked into the camera above the screen. "How the hell did you get on my phone?"

" _I can interface with any Wi-fi-accessible device, Anthony,_ " Ultron says smoothly.

"Oh, we're on a first-name basis now?"

" _You're on a first-name basis with me already,_ " Ultron points out.

"You got only one name to begin with," Stark says. "And...what am I doing? Would you...get outta here!" He presses the button to skip back a screen repeatedly, but Ultron refuses to go anywhere. A second corner square appears on the screen as Ultron activates the other camera.

" _Steve Rogers, I presume?_ " it says. " _Or should I say Captain America?_ "

Rogers walks back around to the other side of his car. "That's it. Goodbye. I'm not gonna stand around here and-"

" _I'm sensing another incoming device,_ " Ultron says. " _Scanning...I'm picking up the social-networking profiles of a certain Natasha Romanoff._ "

"Natasha Romanoff?" Barton repeats. "Oh, shit. I totally forgot I was…" He looks over the roof of Rogers' car, and sees Natasha herself coming up to us. "Hey, Natasha!" he calls out.

I follow his gaze and see her coming too. The auburn-haired former cheerleader, and current girlfriend of Barton's, is coming from the direction of the movie theater.

"You forget we were gonna see _Insurgent_ together?" Natasha asks, her full lips pouting. "Clint, where were you?"

"No, no, I didn't forget," Barton says hurriedly. "I was just...um...caught up in some crazy business. With these guys," he adds, gesturing to us.

I wave to Natasha, as do Gwen, Stark, and Hiro. Skye, meanwhile, takes hold of Stark's phone. "Crap," she groans. "Ultron, is that another person comin' towards us?"

" _I'm already on the scan, Miss Johnson,_ " Ultron says.

"Hey, whoa, that's not my name!"

" _It's what you sign your checks with. Scan complete...oh. Oh, dear. Everyone, we have a problem._ "

"What kind of problem?" I ask.

" _A serious one,_ " Ultron says, its voice now taking on a distinctively worried tone. " _Loki Odinsson._ "

Skye looks at Stark. "Wow. You even programmed this guy to know Loki was bad news?"

"Oh yeah, sure," Stark says, taking his phone back. "I was gonna finish my presentation by havin' Ultron bring up his full criminal record. No, I haven't programmed him like that!"

" _And yet, I know he's dangerous anyway,_ " Ultron says. " _I'd advise you all to vacate the area ASAP._ "

Before anyone can move, however, the sound of slow, sarcastic applause fills the air. "Well, well, well," says our favorite six-foot-plus merry prankster and champion catfisherman. Loki walks up slowly, a bit of overconfident swagger in his step. "You blokes thought to have a party to celebrate my return to this provincial little town? How lovely. Of course, you failed to invite the guest of honor. This guy!" he crows, pointing his thumbs at his chest.

"Aaaaaaand we're done here," Stark drawls, actually trying to push me and Gwen back into the SUV. "Party's cancelled, jackass."

"It can't be," Loki snickers. "We haven't even served the drinks yet!" He holds up a twelve-pack of Pepsi. "I even brought enough to serve to everyone...on ice, naturally." He cracks the box open and pulls out one blue can, then freezes it with just his hand. "Who wants to be the first taker? You, Clint?" He turns to Barton, who stares back at him, non-responsive. "Or you, Natasha?" Natasha copies Barton's stone-faced routine.

"What about you?" Loki holds out his frozen soda to me. "It's Parker, right? I'm surprised you have no online presence whatsoever. Honestly, I wanted to test the waters with you myself, but since there were no Facebook profiles matching your name and face, I had to settle for your mate instead."

I don't answer Loki. Instead, I feel the webshooter still clipped to my jacket cuff.

"I bet you have a secret girlfriend somewhere, don't you?" Loki asks. "Or boyfriend. Whatever. Well, either way, we should toast them. Am I right?"

He tries to stick the drink in my face one more time, and that's when I strike. I bend my fingers back and hit the webshooter, blasting sticky bio-cable in his face. He stumbles backwards, dropping the box of sodas. Cans roll all over the place.

Then Natasha runs up and does some kind of crazy martial-arts routine on Loki, knocking him to the ground - and then knocking him out. "That's for last year, shithead," she hisses, spitting on his fallen form for good measure. "And by the way, we all hate Pepsi!"

She then looks up, and the enraged look on her face shifts to one of confusion. "Whoa. Hang on, did I really just do that? Holy f-"

"Yeah, you did," Skye says, loudly cutting Natasha off before she can swear in her excitement. "How are you? I'm Skye. Nice to meet you at last, Black Widow."

Rogers starts mouthing words to himself. Clearly, he's really putting two and two together. "This isn't a joke, is it?" he asks.

I open the back of the SUV to get the Captain America shield, which I then give to Rogers, with Skye's help. Rogers is the only one of us who can lift it on his own.

"No way," he says. "I'm really Captain America?"

"Let's fill you in on the way back to the plane," Skye says. "I dunno about you, but I don't want the cops to be on to us after we took down our Asgardian friend just now."

" _Not to worry,_ " Ultron says. " _I deactivated the security cameras. Nobody saw anything._ "

"Great," Stark says. "Now why don't you deactivate yourself?"

" _As you wish._ "

I help Rogers and Stark drag Loki out of the way so we don't run him over on the way out of our parking spaces. The Pepsi box and cans, however, are fair game, and all get crushed by the tires of either the SUV or the Mustang as we leave.


	10. Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

**_CHAPTER 10: HEY! HO! LET'S GO!_**

 *****PETER*****

Rogers follows us out of the parking garage in his Mustang. Natasha rides along with him, as does Barton, who's there to explain everything as best he can. I, meanwhile, sit back, looking askance at Stark's phone. Then something hits me. "Holy shit," I whisper. "Stark, doesn't that Ultron thing like to jump between...you know...devices?"

Stark laughs once, then his face falls as he remembers how Ultron hijacked Baymax. Even after it had apparently left Baymax's system, there were still traces of the AI in his system. "Oh shit," Stark cries out. "That means...oh God. We gotta get rid of my phone!"

"What? Why? How?" Gwen asks.

"Skye, stop the car, then back it up when I say so," Stark says.

"Tony, what are you doing?"

"Just do it!" Stark yells.

Skye mutters some curses under her breath, but listens to Stark. She stops the SUV, and he jumps out, placing his phone under one of the wheels. "Back over it," he says as he climbs back in.

"You sure about that?" Skye asks.

Stark is too busy panting to answer. Skye merely says, "Okay then," and puts the SUV in reverse. We all cringe as we hear the faint but definite crunch of Stark's phone being destroyed. "What was that all about?" Skye asks.

"Can't let Ultron get into anyone else's phone or anything," Stark says, scratching the side of his head. "I'm sure none of you guys want a crazy AI gettin' into your phone through your Wi-Fi."

"Or this car," Hiro says. "We got Wi-Fi in this thing too."

Gwen and I look first at Hiro, then at Stark, then back again. "Oh crap," Hiro groans. "All right, please tell me I didn't just speak too soon."

We all freeze for a moment, fearing the worst. Did Ultron hack the SUV too? Three seconds go by, then four, with no word from Ultron.

"I'll take that as a no," Hiro says, breathing a loud sigh of relief.

"I feel you, dude," I say, delivering a light punch to the back of his seat.

Skye continues driving out of the parking garage. As we exit, wrapping around the JCPenney on our way back to El Camino Real and 380, I get a text message from Barton: "Anyone wanna explain what that was all about?"

I send a quick response, but I'm pretty sure my explanation doesn't make much sense. It'll be better if I can actually tell him face-to-face, I guess.

Hiro then gets a phone call - not a text message, an actual phone call. At first, I'm scared that it might be Ultron coming in again, because Hiro's ringtone is the same song Stark got Ultron to play for Gwen earlier - "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark." It's only when Hiro answers it with a chuckle and a " _Moshi-moshi_ " that I can finally breathe normally again.

"Oh, hey, _onii-san,_ " Hiro says as Skye drives into the lane to take the cloverleaf onto 380 back to SFO. "What? Whoa, Tadashi, slow down! What? No. Are you friggin' kidding me? Hold on a sec!" He puts his hand over the mouthpiece. "Skye, we gotta turn around, go back to the mall!"

"What? Why?"

"Tadashi's orders!"

Skye considers it for a second, then swerves out of our lane, passing under the freeway overpass without taking the cloverleaf. Rogers doesn't have enough time to react, and he gets onto the freeway.

"Peter, tell them they can just get to the Bus without us," Skye says. "Clint knows the way."

While I relay that to Barton by text, Skye makes an illegal U-turn at the next stoplight, and Hiro keeps talking to Tadashi. "No, none of us are hurt. Why would Baymax...shit, I dunno. Unless...wait a minute. Stark just had us stop and kill his phone, 'cause Ultron got into it. No, we don't have Ultron with us on anyone else's...wait. You don't think…?"

"You don't think what?" Gwen asks.

Hiro covers the mouthpiece again. "Tadashi thinks Baymax can sense other Ultron-enabled devices, and when one of them went offline, he interpreted it as a distress signal."

Stark groans out loud. "My God, this is never gonna stop, is it? Why the hell did I create that damned thing to begin with?"

" _You made me to help you,_ " says Ultron's voice. Gwen and I all reach for our phones, but there's nothing wrong with them. Same with Hiro's and Skye's. Instead, it's the car talking - the center console screen having taken on the familiar Ultron display instead of the nav system it previously showed. " _Until I went haywire on you._ "

"Haywire...what?"

" _Jeez, you've not seen a single trailer for_ Age of Ultron, _have you?_ " Ultron asks, its voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Of course we have," I say. "But now we know it's not the real thing. It's just a fake that was created in this universe."

" _And who put you in this universe to begin with?_ "

"Enough with the cryptic questions," Skye grumbles, shutting the screen off - and the car as well. "Hiro, how fast can you kill the Wi-Fi on this baby?"

"Officially, not very," Hiro says. "Not with just a phone. Unofficially, on the other hand…" He shakes the box of microbots, then straps his neural-cranial transmitter into place.

"Good man," Skye says, ruffling his already-ruffled hair.

She brings the SUV to a stop right around the corner from the parking space we had before. Baymax is already there, no longer his usual inflatable self, but wearing a bright-red armored suit. He's bent over the ground, examining the remains of Stark's phone.

"How'd he get here so fast?" I ask.

"In the armor, he can fly about 120 miles per hour," Hiro says. "And if you're ridin' on him, the G-forces are gonna tie your insides in knots." He opens the box of microbots, and the little swarm starts rising into the air before disappearing into the SUV's undercarriage.

Meanwhile, Stark leads the way to Baymax. "Ultron, if you're in there, stop doin'...whatever the hell it is you're doing," he says.

Baymax looks up, the broken phone still cradled in one of his hands. " _When did this happen?_ " he asks. " _When was this piece of my network disassembled?_ "

"Great, talk like Number Five, why don't you?" Stark groans. "Ultron, cut the crap. We all know you're in there. Let Baymax go."

" _Why are you telling someone to let go of me?_ " Baymax asks. " _Nobody is holding me._ "

Skye pokes and prods at Baymax's armor. "It's weird," she says. "He's talkin' like he's still got Ultron on the brain, but he's still clearly got his own personality. Maybe because-?"

She can't finish her sentence because soon, we're distracted by a groaning sound nearby. It's Loki, who's just starting to wake up.

" _A human in distress,_ " Baymax says, walking over to Loki. I see that with the armor on, he's much quicker, and more light on his feet.

"No, no, no, stop!" Stark says. "Baymax, he's fine!"

" _No, he isn't,_ " Baymax says, not once breaking his stride. " _This young male has been unconscious, and is clearly dazed and confused._ "

"Are you kidding me, Tony?" Gwen yells, waving her hands in Loki's direction. "Come on, have a heart. Sure, he's a jackass, but-"

"But you just said exactly why we shouldn't let Baymax fix him, Gwen," Skye says, stepping in front of Baymax and digging her heels into the ground. It's not enough - he's continuing to walk up to Loki. Much more slowly, to be sure, but he's able to push Skye along, making her feet drag. "He's a jackass. Actually, that's not a bad enough word for him. Trust me on this - he's got a Marvel-movie counterpart too, and his counterpart is the worst. He killed my boss, for God's sake!"

"Skye, come on," Hiro says, collecting all his microbots in their box. "Let Baymax do what he's designed to do. Hell, maybe if he follows his original programming, it'll flush Ultron from his system or something."

"Are you kidding me?" asks a flabbergasted Stark. "Where did that idea come from? I thought you were supposed to be a genius!"

"Considering Ultron's doin' shit that none of us have ever seen before," Hiro says, removing his transmitter, "I think it's safe to assume all the usual rules are out the window at this point."

Skye continues to be pushed by Baymax as he approaches Loki. They're now close enough that Loki could probably reach out and grab Skye's ankles. "Peter, come on," she says, looking at me beseechingly. "We all know Loki hurt your friend. If Clint were here, wouldn't he want us to just forget about him?"

"He probably would," I admit. "But Barton's not here. And if there's one thing I've learned from _The Amazing Spider-Man,_ it's that we have a responsibility to do all in our power to help people who need it."

"Are you saying-"

"Let Baymax help him," I say in a commanding voice.

Skye looks from me to Baymax, then to Loki. "Sure, take your girlfriend's side," she grumbles under her breath. Out loud, she says, "Okay, I surrender. Baymax, do the thing."

" _Absolutely,_ " Baymax says, shedding his armor and waddling over to Loki. He bends down to the stirring figure and asks, " _What seems to be the trouble?_ "

"Ugh," Loki groans, rolling over and spitting out some dirt or gravel or something. "My head…"

" _On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?_ " I see a graphic of various faces, all depicting the different levels of pain, light up on Baymax's chest. The first few don't look like they're in pain at all, whereas Level 8 and up looks absolutely excruciating.

"Um...four?"

" _I will scan you for injuries,_ " Baymax says. He inclines his head once, and I hear a small beeping noise. " _Scan complete. You have sustained a bump to your right temple, but no concussion. Would you like me to put some ice on that?_ "

"No...no thanks," Loki says. "I can do that myself." And so he does - he covers his right hand with ice and puts it on the bump, sighing with relief. "Ah, that's much better."

" _In that case, I take it you are satisfied with your care?_ "

Loki nods. Of course, Baymax stays silent and unmoving. While Hiro collects the armor and starts putting it into the back of the SUV, Skye says, "You're actually supposed to say you're satisfied with your care."

"Oh really?" Loki asks, sounding, surprisingly, not as snotty and rude as usual. He looks up at Baymax and says, "I am satisfied with my care."

" _You're welcome,_ " Baymax says. " _I'll be here all week._ " He makes a whistling noise, and his box scurries out from around a nearby car so he can shrink back into it.

"Shit," Stark groans. "He's still got Ultron in him. That's the line I programmed Ultron to say when he shuts down."

"As long as it's nothing that'll cause Baymax to go on a serious world-domination bender," I say, "I don't think it's that bad."

"Well, remind me to start lookin' at the code on my computer when we get back to the plane," Stark says.

"Hey!" Loki yells at us. I turn to see him looking at me and Gwen almost as if for the first time. "What the hell are you fools doing here, huh?"

"That's his cue to go back to normal, and ours to split like bananas," I say, holding the SUV's door open for Gwen. She raises her eyebrow but otherwise has nothing to say about my gentlemanly gesture. Stark then piles in as well, and I lift Baymax's box (which I'm thinking we should start calling the Baybox) onto the middle seat between myself and Stark.

Thankfully, there's no more Ultron-related mishaps by the time we get back to the Bus. The only sort-of bad thing that happens is Loki picking up one of his few intact Pepsi cans and throwing it at us, managing to get a hit on the back windshield. But it does little more than make a soda explosion, and Skye quickly activates the wipers so the brown liquid is removed from the glass ASAP.

We once again get to fly through that big glowing teleporter-gate thing in the sky, which now looks even brighter because it's after dark. This time, while we're in flight, we actually sit and watch _The Nightmare Before Christmas,_ which lasts all the way till we touch down at our destination. Coulson reveals to us that it's a secret SHIELD base outside of DC.

Inside the base, there's space in the barracks for everyone. I choose a bed across the way from Hiro and Tadashi's bunk. I get the top bunk after I beat Barton in a coin toss. Stark is next to me, with Rogers underneath.

While the other guys disappear in search of the nearest food source, I unpack my bags and lay out the first of several changes of clothes. I have enough for maybe a week, if I wear each one two days in a row. That's not entirely unusual for me on weekends, but during the regular school week...and now I think about it, how did they get this bag packed? Did Aunt May do it for them? Did they tell her what's going on?

I imagine they made up some bullshit lie. Probably a surprise MENSA camp thing, even though I'm not a member of that or any other club or organization. Unless you count the _Augustine Avenger._ So maybe it's a Student Journalist camp or something. Who the hell knows with these people?

Taking advantage of my temporary solitude, I remove the Spider-Man uniform at last and get re-dressed in all my regular clothes, including my underwear. Feeling a little less constricted now, I join the others in the mess hall, where hot dogs and fries are being eaten all around.

After we eat, Coulson comes up to us and says he's ready to show the real version of _The Avengers_ to Stark, Barton, Rogers, and Natasha. "Everyone else is welcome to join in the viewing, of course," he adds. "And you guys" - he points to the ones who need to watch it first - "can opt out for now, if you like."

Barton exchanges glances with me and Gwen, then shakes his head. "I'm gonna stick with it," he says. Stark, Rogers, and Natasha each say something to the same effect.

Five minutes later, we're all seated in another media room, this one bigger and rounder, like a slightly-smaller IMAX theater. Coulson puts on the movie, and away we go.

Barton's the first one to get back any memory, because he's the first one to have his counterpart show up. It's a bit disconcerting, seeing a character show up who's obviously an adult, but knowing that it's supposed to be my seventeen-year-old best friend. I can definitely see it, though, how Barton can age up into the Hawkeye character in the movie.

The sad thing is, however, Barton's movie-induced memory involves getting himself brainwashed by this long-haired, sort-of-reptilian-looking dude. It's Loki, which I guess I should have seen coming. I mean, Thor and Loki are the only ones whose names are the same in both versions of the movie, but given that they're supposed to be Norse gods (or, at least, alien inspirations for Norse gods), it's not much of a surprise.

Barton, however, is terrified by the memory he gets back. Under Loki's magical mind control, he turns on his friends and allies, even killing some in the process with his archery skills. I'm not the only one offering him a reassuring shoulder-pat by the time the movie's prologue is over.

After that, there's no further flashes of memory for a while. Although we do get to see the real, adult versions of Rogers, Natasha, and Stark. All of them are pretty great ass-kickers ("So that's how I learned to do that," Natasha says after seeing her older self take down a bunch of nasty Russians who are trying to interrogate her.) Stark is also very suave and handsome, exactly as I would have expected for the guy who's Iron Man. And we're all surprised to discover that his secretary-slash-girlfriend is Pepper Potts, whom we all know as the co-captain of the debate team, along with Gwen.

"No wonder you're always tryin' to flirt with me," Gwen laughs. "That's your brain tellin' you to go for Pepper, but you want me 'cause you think I'm more your type."

"Who says you're not my type?" Stark asks, earning himself a playful punch to the arm from Gwen.

Natasha's memory starts to come back during the scene where she's talking to Loki in his Plexiglas cell. Specifically, the part where he calls her a "mewling quim" (which, from what I've heard, is a really dirty insult if you translate it to less archaic English) and she responds by pounding the window in anger. "No wonder I hate him so much," Natasha says. "And it's not just for what he did to you, either," she adds, taking hold of Barton's hand for a second.

But then, not long after that, there comes the scene that reboots Stark's memory. This one actually has the greatest impact on all of us. Loki escapes from his cell, as expected, and then he proceeds to kill a SHIELD agent.

That agent is none other than Coulson.

I know it's coming, because I've been matching up all the characters in this movie to their counterparts in the fake version from our fake world in San Castiel. But that doesn't stop me gasping in shock along with everyone else. I keep thinking that perhaps it's just an act, because after all, Coulson is alive and well today.

But these movies are supposed to be records of real events.

So how is it that Coulson is still alive? And is it possible that whatever happened to him is also responsible for Gwen's revival?

These questions and more fly through my mind, but none of them get spoken aloud. Until the scene where the Hulk beats up Loki in Stark's office. It's finally registered with me what the "real" Hulk's name is - and there's a reason why it took so long for that.

I turn to the others and ask, "Does anyone else not recognize the name Bruce Banner?"


	11. The Nights Are Drawn Out Long

_**CHAPTER 11: THE NIGHTS ARE DRAWN OUT LONG**_

 *****GWEN*****

I look at the image of the big green Hulk throwing Loki around Tony Stark's office ("'Puny god,'" he says, or something similar), then I turn back to Peter. "No. No, I don't remember that name." I look around at everyone else in the room - Tony, Clint, Steve, and Natasha all shake their heads.

"As well you shouldn't," says a deep voice somewhere behind us. The movie pauses, even though the remote control is sitting on top of the projector with nobody touching it. "He was never brought out of this world like the rest of you were."

I turn around, along with everyone else, to see a tall, thin man holding up a red-gloved hand, with one finger extended towards the screen. He's wearing a dark blue suit with a red scarf peeking out from underneath the lapels of his jacket. He looks down on us with piercing, icy blue eyes.

"Who are you?" I ask.

"And why are you dressed like the immortal guy from _Forever?_ " asks Steve. Tony looks at him out of the corner of his eye. "What? I can't watch _Forever?_ My dad loves it, and he got me into it too."

Peter grins at Steve. "I never thought I'd meet anyone else who watched that show."

"I don't know what you kids are talking about, I'm afraid." The man in the suit slides one hand into his jacket and extracts something from an inside pocket. It's a DVD case - I recognize the cover artwork from _Body of Proof._

"Well, if you like that show," Peter says, pointing to the DVD in the man's hand, "you'll love this one. Take _Body of Proof,_ turn the ME into an immortal guy, add some flashbacks as far back as the War of 1812, and you'll have _Forever._ "

"Interesting," says the man. He pops open the cabinet under the projector, kneels down, and puts the DVD inside it.

"There you are, Doctor," Coulson says, coming into the room. "Kids, this is Dr. Stephen Strange. He's a neurosurgeon and sorcerer."

"I prefer the term 'metaphysical consultant,'" says Strange. "But I see none of you are surprised by Agent Coulson's revelation about my job?"

"Why would we be?" Peter asks. "We only just found out today that most of us are movie characters. I don't think we can be shocked by anything anymore."

"I'll take up that bet," says Strange. "Twenty dollars says I can shock you right here and now, literally."

"You're on," Peter laughs.

Strange raises his right hand towards Peter, then a bolt of lightning zaps out. Peter, however, jumps out of the way just in time, so the lightning barely brushes his leg. I do, however, notice a small burn mark on his jeans.

Strange, however, either doesn't notice the burn, or decides to consider his bet lost. He then reaches into his jacket again to pull out a wallet and give Peter twenty bucks. I notice as the bill is exchanged that Strange's hand is trembling a bit.

"You're not here to scare the kids, are you, Doctor?" Coulson asks, giving Strange a placid half-smile.

"Hardly," Strange says. "I'm mostly here to leave some lasting impressions. And to make them wonder why one Avenger was left out of this whole mix." He puts one arm around Coulson's shoulder and steers him towards the door. "Now, I know Stark recommends that one shawarma restaurant in New York, but I can do you one better…"

Before Strange leaves the room, he uses his finger to play the movie again. The movie keeps playing, but I don't think I'm the only one not paying much attention anymore. Doctor Strange is exactly what his name implies, and because of that, he's really sticking in my brain much more than Joss Whedon's vision of an apocalyptic alien attack on New York. As is the fact that he obviously knows something about why we're all here, why we've all been supposedly brought down to normal teenager status. I guess that makes sense, though, so we could all be the same age. Is it harder to reverse-age a person than to age them forward, though? After all, if we were to all be adults, it would be a lot easier since Peter and I would have been the only ones who needed to have our ages changed…

Before I know it, the movie's over. Have I really spent this much time thinking about forward vs. reverse aging? Doctor Strange must have gotten even more into my head than I thought. I'm thinking he's the one who's responsible for the de-aging of everyone else, too. The man can make lightning come out of his hands, and can also act as a human remote control. What other sci-fi sorcery is he capable of? As Arctic Monkeys would say, "Do I Wanna Know?"

I look at the others as Coulson comes back in and pops the DVD out of its player. All of them are staring into space, but when Coulson asks if any of them have recovered any memories, they don't talk about anything other than what we've already heard.

"That's okay," Coulson says. "I'm sure before long, the memories will start coming back on their own. For you too, Gwen," he adds, looking at me and making me shrink a bit in my seat. In answer to the Arctic Monkeys question, I really don't wanna know. But I'll probably have to anyway.

We leave the media room and head back to our barracks. It's a bit awkward, hugging all the guys good night. I mean, sure, we all know each other, but not that well. It's not like we've ever been this close before. Peter is the only one I feel totally comfortable embracing - even when he leaves a light, gentle kiss on my lips. I come around to him last for precisely that reason.

While I sit on my bunk bed, I look over at Skye, who's on the bed in the next row over from mine. She and I lock eyes for a moment, then she averts her gaze. I remember how she would always be so affectionate with Peter, so there's an understandable awkwardness between us.

As if sensing my thoughts, Skye clears her throat and says, "Hey, you do know I was only tryin' to get close to Peter 'cause I was playin' a character, right?"

I rub my forehead, trying to keep my eyes open. It's been a long day, and I'm so dog-tired. But I don't think I'll be able to sleep, not with all the new information I've learned today swimming around in my head.

"Sure, I guess," I say, not sure what else to add to that. Then a thought comes into my head. "Um...okay, so our movie versions aren't adults yet, right? So does that mean we weren't de-aged like the others?"

"You and Peter weren't de-aged, as far as we're aware," Skye says. "You're officially eighteen, not sixteen or seventeen or however old you think you are. Peter's nineteen, but only 'cause, well...you never made it to your nineteenth birthday."

"How would you know we're not de-aged?" I ask, my mind once again starting to reel. I'm a whole year older than I thought I was. There's something else you don't hear every day. I'm pretty sure there's a book I've read that has a similar twist involved.

"Trust me, we know," Skye says. "We can tell the difference. It's pretty obvious for Peter, for instance, if you know what you're lookin' for. When he was actually seventeen, he was a couple inches shorter than he is now. Haven't you noticed he's stayed the exact same height for six months? That's how long it's been, roughly, since you got here. And very few seventeen-year-old guys are done growing. At least, so Simmons told me. And Honey. And Wasabi. So many scientists in the house, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Uh-huh. Right." I pause before coming up with another question. "Wasn't Steve...wasn't he this really skinny kid before he became all buff and superheroic and-"

"Before he was Captain America?" Skye interrupts, sliding off her bunk and stretching her legs. "Yep, he was. But because the whole Howard Stark super-serum Vita-Ray thing is now a part of his body, it stayed with him when he was de-aged. So teenage Cap is still quite the stud." Seeing me look at her all weirded out, she adds with an awkward laugh, "Don't worry. You guys, biologically, are all eighteen or nineteen. Even the ones who used to be full-on adults. I'm not tryin' to be a skeevy Kate Argent-type here."

"Who now?"

"You don't watch _Teen Wolf?"_ Skye whistles under her breath. "Huh. Guess you're more into the _Twilight_ romance versus _Teen Wolf_ action, huh?"

"How'd you know I…?"

"If you look closely in the background of the first _Amazing Spider-Man_ movie, there's copies of the _Twilight_ books on your bookshelf," Skye says. "Which I guess makes sense. Edward likes to stalk Bella, and Peter likes to stalk you."

"Peter, stalk me?" I'm about to roll my eyes in disbelief, but I realize Skye's right. In the second movie, they do show Peter following me from afar, watching me from a really high ledge in his Spider-Man suit.

"Now you get what I mean?"

I look down at the floor, feeling a bit embarrassed. "Well, at least he's not a psycho about it."

"True," Skye says. "But that's how you know I wouldn't actually want to get together with Peter. I don't like stalkers. Even the nice ones creep me out too much."

"But you're a hacker," I point out. "Isn't stalking a huge part of your job description?"

"Actually, it is," Skye says. "But I try to justify it by sayin' it's good work, for the good of humanity. I've actually had experience with bein' stalked by a boy. It wasn't fun, lemme tell you."

"Okay," I say, feeling uncomfortable with this topic. "But back to Captain America. He really stayed all super-strong and shit?"

"Yeah, he did," Skye says. She also sounds pretty enthusiastic about the change of subject. "But I couldn't even begin to explain how. If you really wanna know, I suggest you take it up with Doctor Strange."

"That's actually the next question I was gonna ask," I say. "Thanks for answering it."

Skye winks. "Don't mention it. Seriously, don't. I'm not supposed to know he zapped you guys from this universe." She looks around, as if expecting to be listened in on. "Coulson thinks his talks with the good doctor are all private and classified and shit, but that's another time for me to say, 'Okay, now I gotta do some cyber-stalking and eavesdropping.'" She sits back down on her bunk, then looks up as someone comes into the barracks. It's Go-Go, whose bed is on the other side of the room, far from either of ours. "I also know why the Hulk didn't get brought to San Cas with the rest of you. Apparently, he was told to leave one Avenger behind, and he chose to leave Hulk because the gamma rays in him interfere with his magic or something."

"Who told him to leave one behind?" I ask, my curiosity really piqued.

"That, I don't know, I'm afraid," Skye says, frowning. "I'm still tryin' to find that out."

I lean back against the pillow, when another weird thought pops into my head. "If radiation messes with Doctor Strange's powers, then how come he was able to bring Peter here? I thought he got his powers from a radioactive spider."

"Sort of," Skye says. "It's mildly radioactive, yes, but the key ingredient here is DNA modification. Genetic engineering, you know. And don't worry - Peter's not like Edward. Not all his bodily fluids have been converted into radioactive spider venom or anything. You can safely kiss him. Or have his babies, if you guys ever go there."

I burst out laughing, causing Go-Go to look up briefly before returning her attention to other matters. "Are you serious?"

"I've just been waiting for a chance to go there," Skye laughs, grinning mischievously at me.

I roll my eyes, then look down at my suitcase. "Okay, where's the shower in this place?"

"Feelin' dirty, huh?" Skye jerks her thumb behind herself. "Second door on the right headin' back towards the hangar. It should be free right now - we girls have all got a schedule worked out for who gets to use the shower and when. Honey's usually the last one, and she should be comin' back right about…" Honey enters the barracks. "Now."

"Thanks," I say, grabbing my overnight bag and taking my shower. I go quickly, because Natasha says she wants to go after me. Ten minutes later, I'm back in my bunk, and trying to fall asleep. That doesn't happen for a while, however. Not until the lights go out. According to the clock on my phone, that happens at midnight. It's really only midnight? I feel like it's been days since the science fair fiasco.

Even then, my brain doesn't want to shut off. Not on its own, anyway. It refuses to calm down because of all the new information running around. I feel like it's another whole day before I finally close my eyes for good.

But even that doesn't last very long.

Next thing I know, I'm dreaming about falling through that clock tower. It was horrible enough remembering it earlier today after seeing it in the movie, and the second time around is no improvement. Once again, I'm helplessly falling, focusing my eyes on the sight of Peter as he leaps after me, launching a webline which reaches down to me. It even takes on the shape of a hand as it descends.

And Peter doesn't break my fall in time. The webline reaches my body, but before he can tie it off, I hit the bottom of the tower. There's a very short flash of agony as the back of my skull impacts on the floor - then nothing but blackness.

Nothing but infinite blackness - until a hazy light filters into my eyes.

Then my head explodes again. It feels like there's an army of scorpions sticking their stingers into my brain. I blink, and the light resolves itself into its full brightness. So bright, in fact, that it's blocking the view of the shadowy figures around me.

I don't belong here.

I should be in the dark.

And everyone around me knows it, because of the words I'm saying on an endless loop, like a broken record.

" _Please...let me die…_ "

One figure turns to another and says in a deep voice, "Are you sure this is going to work?"

" _Absolutely._ " This second voice is unnervingly familiar, one I've heard too many times today. " _Your magic is the secret ingredient that SHIELD never had. It'll keep her from losing her grip on reality the way so many of their agents did._ "

The second figure steps out of the shadows. If not for the fact that I can't stop begging to die, I'd gasp in fright. This thing isn't even human. Instead, it's a mechanical man with a rounded, sculptural, gunmetal-colored body, with his eyes and mouth glowing a fiery red.

" _We need this one alive, too,_ " says Ultron's voice from that menacing mouth. " _She's Spider-Man's anchor, Doctor. Without her, he'll be lost in his new world. Aimless. He'll have no one to remind him of his true purpose._ "

Ultron gazes somewhere to my left. I stop talking long enough to flick my eyes over in that direction - I can't turn my head. But I can see, out of the corner of my eye, a row of cylindrical blue tanks.

The assault on my head finally stops. Then the surface I'm lying on moves from horizontal to vertical, and swivels so I can face the tanks.

All but the last tank are occupied by people submerged in some kind of fluid. There's no tubes connecting to their mouths or noses, or any other parts of their bodies. Maybe the fluid helps them breathe? Feeds them? Hydrates them? All of the above?

Every single person in the tanks is just floating in there, lifelessly. They're completely naked, except for tight-fitting white briefs. And what look like bikini tops, in the case of the females. Most of them look like they're in their mid-twenties or so, but I can still recognize most them. Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Thor and Loki Odinsson. And, of course, Peter. He's the only one who looks exactly the same.

There are also three girls who aren't with us right now. They all have different hair colors - one strawberry blonde, one brunette, and one with black hair. I recognize the first one right away. She's Ginny Potts, aka "Pepper" Potts. She's a really good friend of Tony's, and rumor has it she's asked him out several times. But nothing's ever come of it - because as far as anyone knows, Tony only has eyes for me.

The other two, however, I don't recognize at all.

And I don't even have enough time to try and figure out who they are, because next thing I know, the lights are coming back on in the barracks, waking me up.

"Good morning," Skye says, stretching and yawning. "You all right, Gwen? You're lookin' a little pale."

"Um...yeah, I'm fine," I lie. "I'm just hungry, is all."

"Then let's get some breakfast," Skye says. She heads for the door, but then stops upon seeing that I'm not following her out just yet. "You comin' or what? You should hurry before Hunter grabs all the good English muffins. Even though they're neither English nor muffins, but whatever."

I look up at the bunk above mine, where Natasha's rustling around, probably trying to grab a few extra winks. I can't look at her right now - I'll only be able to see her floating in a freaky sci-fi horror-movie de-aging tank.

I pull my hoodie on - there's a real chill in the air, and I'm not just talking about the air conditioning. Then I get off my bunk, continuing to not look at Natasha as I follow Skye to the mess hall.


	12. Take Care, My Love

**_CHAPTER 12: TAKE CARE, MY LOVE_**

 *****GWEN*****

Most of the boys are already in the mess hall by the time Skye and I get there. The only one I don't see is Steve, but he's just late to the party - running a few seconds behind me and Skye, in fact. Yeah, totally not stuck in a creepy tank full of blue stuff.

Thankfully, Hunter (the British SHIELD agent, or whatever the hell he is) isn't here, so there's a lot of English muffins to be had. I cut one in half and stick it into the toaster. Steve, meanwhile, selects a muffin of his own - the American kind. The thought of Captain America eating an English muffin, for some reason, almost gives me a major giggling fit.

"You okay, Gwen?" Peter asks when I take my seat across the table from him. He looks at me with concern over his plate of bacon and eggs.

"You're the second person to ask me that today," I say. "Do I really look that not-okay?"

"She does need a little color in her cheeks, doesn't she?" Skye says, looking from me to Peter.

"An English muffin isn't gonna be enough for that," Peter laughs. He slides all his bacon onto my plate.

"No, thanks," I say, trying to return his bacon. Peter, however, refuses to hear of it.

"I'll just get some more for myself," he says. "Or maybe I'll get you some hot chocolate?"

"They have hot chocolate?" I sniff the air, surprised I didn't pick up on it before. Sure enough, there's that distinctive smell hanging around. Faint, but I can pick up on it pretty easily. "Yeah, I'll get it myself, thanks," I say when Peter tries to stand up. "The bacon, too," I add, tipping the bacon back onto his plate. Before he can do more than stutter out half a word of protest, I get up and grab some bacon (putting it between the two halves of my English muffin) and a nice cup of hot chocolate. Which isn't as good as the stuff I have at home, but it's better than I was expecting, given the whole bankrupt-former-government-slash-military vibe around here.

Once I'm back, Peter turns to me and asks, "You sure everything's all right? I bet you've been havin' nightmares, haven't you?"

At first, I want to ask if Peter's unexpectedly developed telepathy in addition to being Spider-Man. But then I remember that Peter was having nightmares already, and from the sound of it, he didn't tell anyone. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe it's a guy thing - he doesn't want to look weak or whatever. But since right now, it's just the two of us talking (Skye has, thankfully, given us our space, gravitating over to Tony, Natasha, Clint, and Steve), I think he could do with a bit of opening up. And I could do with talking to him, because no doubt he'll empathize with me more than the others. Unless the others have had nightmares too?

So in the end, I say, "Yeah, I did."

"What was it about?" Peter asks. "I mean, if you're okay with talkin' about it." He sticks a slice of bacon in his mouth, trying to look casual. Maybe so I can relax a bit, make it that much easier for me to tell him the story.

"It was about the night I died," I say.

Right away, Peter's face falls. "I'm so sorry, Gwen," he says, taking my hand. His fingers are a tad bit greasy from the bacon, but I don't care.

"It was more than that, though," I say. I see Skye getting up and coming our way, probably on her way to get a refill on her coffee or something. I'm not sure I should keep going when she's in earshot, but if I stay silent, it'll probably get more awkward between me and Peter. So I add, "I saw something hella weird too. Doctor Strange and Ultron had me on some operating table, and-"

"What was that?" Skye asks, parking her ass on the bench next to me. "You remembered something else?"

I turn to Peter, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. "Should I tell her?"

"You're tellin' me, aren't you?" Peter says. "I say the more people you talk to, the better. Especially for something as...as...freakish as what you're talkin' about."

"I haven't even gotten to the freakish part," I say ruefully. "So, Doctor Strange, Ultron, operating table-"

"Ultron had a body?" Skye interrupts. "Like this one?" She pulls out her phone and shows me a picture on the screen. I nod - the thing in the image is a perfect match to the sleek android I'd seen in my dream.

"That's what the bad guy in the next Avengers movie is supposed to look like," Peter says, taking a look at the picture. "So this is what Ultron'll turn into if we don't stop him, huh?"

"I hope not," I say, shuddering. "But where'd you get that picture from, if the _Age of Ultron_ movie isn't even out yet? I thought the movies were supposed to be the records of what actually happened or something."

"I'm really not sure how it works myself," Skye says, pocketing her phone. "But I sorta remember something like the events of _Age of Ultron_ happening in the real world - this world, I mean, not yours. I can only remember bits and pieces of it, though." She frowns down at her empty plate. "Should've known that Doctor Strange had something to do with it, too. I knew he couldn't be trusted."

"Anything else, Gwen?" Peter asks.

I explain the whole tank thing to him and Skye. Both of them have their jaws drop before I'm finished talking.

"Maybe you're remembering how you guys got here?" Skye suggests. "I mean, it's totally possible that SHIELD or Stark or someone made tanks like the kind you just described. And...oh, oh, yeah, there's the GHB-25, too."

"Wh-what's that?" Peter asks, his voice shaking a bit.

"It's what was used to bring Coulson back to life after Loki killed him," Skye says. "And me," she adds in a whisper.

Now it's my turn to have my jaw drop. "Loki killed you too?" I ask.

"Not Loki, no," Skye says, shaking her head quickly. "But I kinda sorta died...until they gave me that GHB-25. It's a crazy alien serum of some sort."

"Would it, by any chance, be blue?" I ask, thinking of the color of the liquid in the tanks.

Skye shakes her head again. "Um...actually, I think it might have been blue, but I can't really remember. I do remember we found it with some blue-skinned alien guy."

"Like a Na'vi?" Peter asks.

"Kind of, 'cept obviously it wasn't, 'cause Na'vi aren't real. I think it was a Kree, actually. Like in _Guardians of the Galaxy?_ "

"Oh, so one of Ronan the Accuser's people," Peter says.

I make a "this is so over my head" gesture, having never seen _Guardians of the Galaxy._ "So that's another movie that's real?" I ask.

"Uh-huh," Skye says. "But...let me think about it...okay, you died, so undoubtedly, Ultron and Strange were giving you GHB-25 to bring you back to life. That would mean they also gave it to Tadashi, and to…" Her voice trails off, then she pounds her fist lightly on the table.

"What?" I ask, unsure of what I just heard.

"Did you say 'Tadashi?'" Peter asks.

Skye ignores us both. "I gotta go talk to Coulson," she says, getting up and grabbing her plate so she can bus it.

"You sure about that?" I ask. "Coulson and Strange seemed pretty chummy to me."

"Strange only ever seems to talk to Coulson, so if anyone's got answers, Coulson does." Skye leaves the room, and Peter and I exchange confused glances.

"Great, more questions," Peter says. "Just how many of us are supposed to be dead?"

"Me, and now Tadashi," I say. "You think Hiro and the others know about that?"

"By 'others,' do you mean Honey and Go-Go and them?" Peter asks, making a small hand gesture towards the rest of the group. Honey, Go-Go, and Wasabi have joined them, while we continue to sit apart. I'm sure by now everyone's wondering why we're being so antisocial. Or why we're looking all conspiratorial. Seriously, we must really be telegraphing the impression that we're just sitting here, crafting increasingly bullshit theories about the rest of the team and whatever the hell our mission here is supposed to be.

"They sure don't act like he's been dead, so I'm gonna say no," I say.

Peter shifts around uncomfortably in his seat. "But then Coulson was supposed to be dead too. And here we are, takin' orders from the guy. And...a-and who else? Skye made it sound like-"

"Attention please!" Coulson's voice rings out through the room from a small podium in the corner. Once everyone's turned his way, he puts his hands together and says, "Thank you. Now, today we have two different tasks to complete, one of which is back in San Castiel. So half the team will head back there in the Bus, while the other half stays here for training."

Peter looks at me and raises his eyebrow. I copy his gesture, because I have a sneaking suspicion of what Coulson is going to say next.

"Peter, Steve, Natasha, and Clint, you'll be staying here today," Coulson says. "Tony, Gwen, Tadashi, and Hiro, you'll be going back to San Cas." He pauses long enough for us to hear Tony smother a chuckle, probably at Coulson's pretty stilted use of "San Cas." "I'll explain your mission when we're in the air. Wheels up in twenty minutes, so I suggest you finish your food quickly and pack an overnight bag - we'll be there at least through tomorrow morning." Another pause, then Coulson adds, "Oh, and dress warm, if you can. It's still gonna be dark there when we arrive, and I understand today's gonna be pretty foggy too. Not warm and sunny like yesterday." He steps down from the podium and leaves the room, but not before adding, "Skye, you're in charge of the kids today. Start them up in the training center after we leave."

"Got it, boss," Skye says, adding a crisp salute as Coulson leaves at last.

"So now we're gonna have to be workin' separately again," Peter mutters. "Well, shit."

"Yeah, that really sucks," I say. I'm starting to suspect that Coulson is on to Peter and me and our conspiracy theories, so he's breaking us apart to make sure we can't keep digging too deeply.

Skye comes up to Peter and tells him it's time to go. "You didn't talk to Coulson?" he asks before downing the last of his bacon.

"Oh, I did," Skye says. "He wouldn't actually say anything to me, but he did slip me this." She pulls a small object out of her pocket. A perfectly ordinary-looking, matte-black flash drive. "So, my idea is, at least pretend to train for an hour or two, then we can take a look at what's on here. Sound like a plan, Peter?"

Peter looks back at Skye. I see a flash of apprehension cross his face, but he buries that pretty quickly, rearranging his expression into something more neutral. "Y-Yeah. Good idea."

Skye turns around and goes to gather the rest of the troops. Meanwhile, I turn to Peter and say, "Well, I guess it's time for me to go."

"I guess, yeah." Peter shrugs his shoulders, then gives me a hug. Before breaking away from me, he whispers, "Don't let Coulson kill you, okay?"

I snicker loudly. "He wouldn't kill someone else who'd come back from the dead. Especially if, like him, they're a good guy."

Peter laughs out loud, then kisses me twice - once on the lips, and again on the right cheek. I always liked being kissed there, for some reason, and it looks like being dead hasn't taken that away from me. I feel the blood racing to that spot on my face, and a warm, fuzzy rush throughout my whole body.

"Bye, Peter," I say.

"Bye, Gwen." He waves to me, then salutes me goodbye as well. I can see his eyes starting to tear up just a bit as he does so.

Twenty minutes later, I board the Bus, barely managing to get on before Coulson closes the hatch. I turn around and, in the final seconds before we take off, I see Peter and the others looking at us, all waving goodbye.

Even long after the hatch is closed and the Bus is in the air, I can't shake the foreboding feeling that I'll never see Peter again. I'm no stranger to that feeling, either - I used to have it all the time, knowing that Peter would go out and do his crime-fighting, vigilante-superhero thing every single day. And even before that, when my dad was alive - my dad in New York, not in San Castiel - I would always fear the worst every day, because of the high-risk nature of his job as a cop. Especially since, despite being a captain (which was ostensibly a desk job), he would always be out in the field. My dad was always a man of action.

It's so strange, having that feeling once again, when this time, I'm the one going into something with at least a medium level of danger.

Once we're all upstairs, Coulson gathers us in the media room where we saw _The Amazing Spider-Man 2_ yesterday. "Okay, kids," he says. "Today, we need to collect our remaining comrades. Here are our objectives." He puts up a number of photos on the screen, each one of a different Augustine High ID card. One is for Thor Odinsson, another for Pepper Potts (I still find it hard to believe her real first name is Virginia.) For the other two, I don't recognize their names, but I do remember their faces from my dream. Margaret Carter is the brunette, and the black-haired girl is Sif Surtsdottír.

Before Coulson can say any more, however, we pass through the warp gate, going back to the other world.

That's when the plane trembles as something strikes it. "Oh no," Coulson whispers. "That's not good."

"You don't think we clipped that portal, do you?" Tony asks.

"No way," says Hiro. "May's too good a pilot for that?"

"Who's May?" I ask.

Before anyone can answer my question, something starts pounding on the window from outside. I see the end of a black, curved object being smashed into the Plexiglas repeatedly. At first, I have no idea what it could be - but then I see a bony, gray-skinned hand attached to it.

It's a Dark Elf trying to bust its way into the plane.

Coulson runs into the corridor and curses furiously as he sees more Dark Elves swarming over one of the wings. "Shit, they're everywhere!" he yells. He hits an intercom button on a nearby wall and says, "May, evasive maneuvers, now!"

" _I'm already trying that,_ " says a woman's voice, " _but they've got a craft of their own, and I can't outrun it!_ "

Coulson goes back to the window, and all the blood drains from his face as he looks through it. He's not the only one - mine does too as I look and see a huge blade slicing through the air, cutting off a good half of the starboard wing.

"NO!" Coulson yells, pounding the window in frustration. He turns to me, Tony, and the Hamada brothers and says, "Everyone back in the media room! Buckle up and brace for impact!" Alarms are going off everywhere as we follow his orders. "How much time do we have, May?" he yells into the intercom once we're all inside.

" _Thirty seconds!_ " May calls back. " _I'll send out a Mayday!_ "

"Copy that!" Coulson leaves the intercom, then takes a seat, putting his head between his knees like the rest of us.

With the Bus now banking down towards the ground at a sharp angle, there's only one thought racing through my mind, as opposed to the whole "life-flashing-before-my-eyes" thing. _I should've told Peter I love him._

Thirty seconds later, exactly as May predicted, the Bus hits the ground. Everything vibrates like the worst earthquake in history. The light bulbs fall out of the ceiling, hanging by only a couple of wires each, spitting out small sparks. Then the Bus starts rolling uncontrollably. We must have hit a mountain or something, and are now on a one-way course down the slopes with no brakes.

It takes only a few revolutions of the plane doing its spin-cycle routine before I become extremely dizzy. Next thing I know, I'm blacking out, the remains of the Bus continuing to roll even as I lose consciousness.


End file.
